Book Review: Gilded

Sixteen-year-old Jae Hwa Lee is a Korean-American girl with a black belt, a deadly proclivity with steel-tipped arrows, and a chip on her shoulder the size of Korea itself. When her widowed dad uproots her to Seoul from her home in L.A., Jae thinks her biggest challenges will be fitting in to a new school and dealing with her dismissive Korean grandfather. Then she discovers that a Korean demi-god, Haemosu, has been stealing the soul of the oldest daughter of each generation in her family for centuries. And she's next.

But that’s not Jae’s only problem.

There's also Marc. Irresistible and charming, Marc threatens to break the barriers around Jae's heart. As the two grow closer, Jae must decide if she can trust him. But Marc has a secret of his own—one that could help Jae overturn the curse on her family for good. It turns out that Jae's been wrong about a lot of things: her grandfather is her greatest ally, even the tough girl can fall in love, and Korea might just be the home she's always been looking for.

Rating: 1 ½ stars

This was the kindlefirst for last month and I was psyched because the last book I read this way I absolutely loved!  This one sounded better than the other had, too.  I did a little research and saw both good and bad reviews and went into it expecting a good story, just nothing special.  The idea was original and I love mythology, so by all means I should have liked this one.

I really, really didn’t, though.  At first, for like five chapters, I liked it.  Do not be fooled by the back, it’s much cooler from the little blurb on the back then it is reading the whole entire thing.

The big problem, I believe is the writing.  It’s mediocre at best, childish at worst.  The words don’t always flow, the story makes sense on a very basic level, and there is absolutely no character growth.  This book takes place in Korea and so I expected to get some culture, but the few parts there are don’t really seem that different from America.  And there’s absolutely no “show” to the storytelling.  It’s all “tell”.  We don’t get to experience this ourselves at all, we just have to go along for the ride and let Jae tell us everything.  Looking back on it now, if written a little better and with a few scenes tweaked around, it would be great middlegrade storytelling (and I don’t mean to demean other MG writers, I’m just saying the way that it was written felt more like it was aimed at younger readers in that it wasn’t as mature as some YA and NA writers write).

The characters were all dry.  Jae, the protagonist, should have been freaking awesome, but she fell flat.  Plus, she’s also some amazing warrior already in all these AP and IB classes at school, and you don’t get into those unless you’re smart.  The whole time, though, she can’t seem to pick up on simple concepts or understand that her plans are atrocious.  She just accepts she’s not good at planning and moves on.  An AP student doesn’t act like that, I mean, come on.  Another problem was that, being an awesome warrior and all, there was no room to grow in that section.  She was already freaking perfect and so, oh no, no way for her to learn at all.  Where’s the character growth?  Just a little?  Oh, wait, there is a little.  For half a chapter she learns this awesome new trick that’s supposed to be mind bending or something.  Yeah, she learns it in half a chapter.  Really?

And the romance.  Marc could have been dreamy, but he was too… nonexistent.  He’s there for her all the time, ready to do anything for her, and should have been your regular prince charming.  Nah, for me he was just blah.  Not particularly romantic or anything.  And the chemistry between the two?  None.  They share a few kisses that are described as being explosive, but um, there was no description to actually show us how great they were.  She was happy, he was happy, it was a good kiss, done.

The consequences in this book are totally off-kilter, too.  Here’s a spoiler to explain what I mean, so read the following paragraph at your own risk:

Jae and Marc are arrested by the police for stealing from a museum.  Her dad’s just mad she was talking to her grandfather.  They’re fined a little.  No court date.  No nothing.  They spend a couple hours in jail and are grounded.  Which, by being grounded, I mean she just can’t… or wait?  There’s really nothing she can’t do.  It’s just a word: grounded.  The police aren’t even super mad.  That doesn’t happen in real life no matter where you are.  Stuff like this just kept the world an arms-length away and totally unbelievable on every level.  End spoiler.

Really, there wasn’t much good about this book except the originality of the concept.  I’d say don’t bother picking it up.