i really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really enjoyed reading this book. I do hope there is more from the author and in this universe.

Interesting characters. Intriguing plot. Dynamic prose. My attention was held the entire time. I enjoyed my time reading this one. I’d suggest this story to everyone who loves magic and intrigue.

It took me a while to get into this book, eventually I found it picked up. through a lot of the book there were references to different things being a Grand Masquerade, but I was unable to pin point why that was used for the title of this book.

Disclaimer: Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book. I have been sent a copy of this book for review purposes. This has not influenced or affected my opinions in this review.

Grand Masquerade started off great. There is an element of supernatural intertwined within every sentence. I loved how the author fleshed out the character. However, I felt that after the beginning started out so well, it slowly went downhill. There was more political content than fantasy which isn’t what I was looking for. Overall, this book was hard to get my teeth stuck into.

*2 stars*

Grand Masquerade by Stephen Perkins, really didn't work for me, the whole writing style failed and I had a really hard time keeping up with it.

★★
The Grand Masquerade is an intriguing suspense novel that, at first, was very entertaining.

What I liked:
○ The cover!
○ The introductory events. The book started off like an episode of X-files. You're thrown into an eerie landscape with an ominous cloud of the supernatural hanging over each paragraph.
○The setting. The author sets up each chapter with its own detailed sights, sounds, smells. You can really picture what the character what experiencing.

What I didn't like:
○ The flowery language. While the descriptors were often interesting, it felt as if it was dragging on and on.
○The character development. Each character had the same manner of speaking (again, too many adjectives) and it was hard to tell them apart.
○The plot. The author drew me in in the beginning, but I found the story to be less and less believable as it went on.

All in all, this book was not what I thought it was and was hard to get through.

Thank you to NetGalley and Star Born Publishing for the advanced reading copy.

I agree with several reviewers this books started out promising but quickly because bogged down in political shenanigans. I liked the descriptions of Vermont and was hoping for something more magical, less political. Maybe it's because of the current political and social situation but I could't finish this book. It felt too heavy right now.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

Grand Masquerade has an amazing beginning with bodies disappearing into the forest, birds circling, accident victims brought back to life, and emotion-laden prose, n, of course, the mysterious others to whom promises have been made. But, the storyline focuses on political intrigue, creepy industrialists, and the whole dam thing breaking. After a Promising start, the story, which was an amalgam of this and that, gets lost in the pages.

What I liked about Grand Masquerade:
- I enjoyed the setting descriptions in this book. The author has a very flowery writing style, which makes it easy for him to transport the reader to small town Vermont.

What I disliked about Grand Masquerade:
- I found the author's writing style very difficult to read. He would add tons of extra adjectives and use very proper wording to describe the character's actions and the scenes.
- An example was when the author wrote "Washington's District of Columbia" is stead of simplifying using "Washington D.C.", "Washington", or "D.C.". The context clues in the story would have clued the reader in to the meaning the author intended.
-The way that that the character's talked was very formally and used out of date idioms for the technology that was present in the story.
-I did not enjoy the amount of supernatural activity involved in the story. I think the story could be equally as thrilling without the included supernatural aspects.
-I think the mystery was revealed way too soon. There was not enough time for the suspense t0 build up before the author revealed major mysterious aspects in the story.

Overall Thoughts:
Overall, I did not enjoy reading this story. There were times when it seemed like a slog to get through. I was expecting a supernatural suspense, but it lacked both supernatural creepiness and suspenseful reveals.


I would like to thank NetGalley and Star Born Publishing for the e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

I struggled significantly with this book and DNF'd it at about 20%. That being such, I will not be posting it publicly.

The prose made the book almost unreadable, and while the idea of the story was really cool, I just couldn't even follow what was going on half of the time. I appreciate the chance to read this book, but I don't think its right for me to express myself about it beyond NetGallery.

I liked this story, it kept me hooked till the end and it's entertaining.
I liked the world building and the characters. The plot flows and never bores.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.