Becoming Marlow Fin - What a Tease!

ARC of Becoming Marlow Finn, Ellen Won Steil

Anticipated release: July 23, 2024 

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Lake Union Publishing, 315 Pages

I was very excited for the opportunity to read and review an advance reader copy of Becoming Marlow Fin by Ellen Won Steil. {Thank you, NetGalley!} She wrote Fortune which had GREAT reviews landing at 4 stars. So with such build up, this was a real let down for me. 

The first few chapters have really poor writing. Everything has an adjective and the adjectives have adjectives. It’s just too much and we lose the point. I think it’s meant to be beautiful prose but it ends up being run on after run on and a bit formulaic.  

Midway through,  the writing thankfully improves but we only get surface material. It’s infuriating. Something happens and it’s major but we just keep moving along, left to our own devices of filling in what is between the lines. That’s fine for some of the time, but every time?? What a tease. It results in constant mystique but no nibble of truths and insight to keep the story going.  The method only works if readers are given some breadcrumbs and without them it’s just really annoying, making reading this novel a total chore and quite a bore. Thus, there isn't much engagement. I lost interest early on and never really gained it back. There were some peaks, but really I just stopped caring and wished for the end. 

The true turnoff for me was instead of celebrating diversity as we do these days there is a moment in which a minority character tricks others, accusing them of derogatory name calling and then calls it the right thing to do. It’s not - it paints them in a very bad light.  Later on we harken back to the “lesson” from this incident but it’s not significant enough to make a great deal of difference at that point, if the reader even makes it to the end of this novel.

I did not  enjoy anything about this snooze fest. Sorry to say I do not recommend this title. Skip it come July when it is released.

Leave some comments below - Have you read this or is it an anticipated read?