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I read Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte because I thought it sounded like a really good read. It was picked for the July 2020 young adult read for COYER book club.

I struggled way more with this book than I had anticipated. I think part of the issue was the start and stop pacing. There would be a huge rush of events and then big dry spells. I can handle big world building but it seemed like there was 25% plot and the other 75% is spent on every character being fully developed. While I appreciated the ending, it really just took too much effort to get there.

Honestly the characters were great. Again this goes back to pacing. There are quite a few characters. I can distinctly remember eight characters. That doesn’t sound like a lot but Four Dead Queens is only 413 pages. I would guess that a quarter of that is spent on the entire back story for the eight characters. The main character, Keralie, was not easy to connect with. I didn’t really care for her.

Between a slow moving plot and too many characters Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte dragged for me. A strong ending wasn’t enough to save it.