Book Review: The Endless Forest

After reading five books in the Wilderness series, reading The Endless Forest was a little bittersweet. And while it was glad to have some closure, overall I felt a little let down by this book.

The Endless Forest tells Daniel Bonner's story, and to be honest, most of it felt like a romance novel. Except there wasn't much tension. Unlike a lot of other books in the series, you know right away that his match is Martha Kirby, a girl from Paradise whose parents have played significant roles in previous books. Not only that, but Daniel and Martha get married pretty early on. I think that was part of the reason why I felt like there wasn't much conflict between the two main characters. There was conflict among the secondary characters, but it just didn't feel like enough to keep me really invested in the book.

I enjoyed reading about Daniel and Martha, though, I won't deny it. But most of what I wanted from this book was, as I said, closure. Most of the closure here comes in the form of newspaper articles placed at the end of the book. The articles are snippets from the future, years after the text of the text of the book has ended. That's when you find out who has had children, who has died, and when they have died. A couple of the choices Donati made there were upsetting. I would have preferred that she just ended the book where the text/story ended and left the rest to our imagination.

I hate to say it, but in a lot of ways, this story could have ended with Queen of Swords...