Location: Canada
Member Since: May 01, 2015

Serena Yung

Smashwords book reviews by Serena Yung

  • 天使·人类之间 on May 21, 2015

    Oh my gosh I loved this book so so so so much!!! I haven't loved a book to such a great intensity in a very long time, and I seldom give five stars, so this book really impressed me! The story plotline was intriguing and original (I love the concept of Wang!), the pacing was excellent, and the language flowed smoothly and beautifully. The setting descriptions were really rich, vibrant, and highly imaginative too. :D But most of all, I loved the character interactions and the main characters, especially Josh and Austin! Josh is my favorite character and Austin my second favorite. (I know their English names because I peeked at the English version which I also bought, haha, and will read too sometime later when I'm feeling less emotionally overwhelmed, lol.) Josh is so cute!!!! And really hilarious too. ^^ Austin is also so good, noble, and incredibly sweet. :) I know I'm repeating myself, but I love them so much! It was also thoroughly a page-turner and I haven't been THIS addicted to a book for a very long time. :D There are so many other things I want to say, but I will write them in a review on Goodreads.com so that I can hide spoilers. I can't wait for the sequel, because I'm dying to see what happens next! ^^ Thank you Graziella and Mimi Lee for writing such an amazing book and making me so happy! :D
  • In With The Pack on March 09, 2016

    Loved this story! It was a very interesting read with good tension, mystery, and suspense. The main (good guy) characters were all quite likable, and what I was particularly pleased with, was that every main character had a backstory, and they all had a good amount of layers and complexity--none were two-dimensional. Most of the main good side cast were dynamic as well, in that they changed throughout the story. My favorite character was Dakota. :D An additional thing I really l appreciated about the story, was that even with the exciting, tense plot events, there was a huge focus on the relationships between the wolves. So you definitely see some psychological and emotional depth here. What I didn't fancy that much about the book, was that there were quite a lot of typos and grammatical errors, which became distracting at times. But overall, it was a very enjoyable story! I liked the moral and philosophical messages conveyed throughout too.
  • Shadow Caste: The Lone Strider on May 29, 2016

    First of all, I want to say that the book cover is beautiful, and I love those fonts! On to the book itself, I thought the ideas in the story were pretty intriguing, particularly the concept of sun striders and night crawlers, and the legend of how the striders and crawlers came to be. There was also enough setting description so the reader gets a strong sense of the environments the characters are in. Yet, the main reason why I'm giving only three stars, is because I personally couldn't connect to Eliza, nor to her romance. In fact, the only characters I liked were Ian and maybe Merissa; Gruff was okay. This is not to say that Eliza, Cera, or David are bad people; I think they are decent (though David is sometimes questionable!), but their personalities just didn't click with me. A possible reason why I couldn't empathize with or relate to Eliza and Cera's romance, is because the relationship started so early, and Eliza fell in love so quickly. Even though I kind of get why Eliza fell for her after such a short time, it was still too fast for me to connect with emotionally. As for the prose, it was okay, but there were too many grammatical and other errors for me to enjoy it much. Another thing that made the book less enjoyable for me, was that there was so little dialogue compared to the countless paragraphs of narration, description, and exposition. This isn't a problem per se, and is a stylistic choice, but for me, the lack of dialogue slowed down the pace too much and made the story far less exciting than it should have been. So basically, I liked the ideas, as they are very interesting, but I didn't quite like the execution.