My First Early Review Opportunity!

     As you all know, I'm an avid reader, have an extensive Goodreads account, follow blogs, I do audiobooks and print books, and plow through them. So I started my own blog :) and decided I needed to get in on this thing I'm seeing all over book social media: people getting to read books, and write reviews, before they're released. Aka, Early Reviews. There are A LOT of publishing companies out there that do this, including big names like Penguin Random House. I, however, haven't found a way to get involved with the big names yet, but I plan to!
     In January, I was given TWO early review copies of books to be published later this year. Both in ebook form. Thanks to my wisdom tooth extraction yesterday, I had the time last night and this morning to tackle the first one, so here it is!

Tudor Rose by W.H. Doyle  
     To be Released 4/9/19
     Read from: Feb 6, 2019 - Feb 7, 2019
     Format: ebook (Kindle)
     Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

     So my first ever early review copy did disappoint. It's hard when we're selecting, I sort of skim through the synopses and pick whatever sounds even remotely interesting. The more books I claim, the more likely I am to win one. I re-read the synopsis to this one after reading the book and was reminded why I chose it. It did seem interesting! But there were just too many irksome things in this book for me to appreciate the story itself. Not only were those things annoying, but they kept happening.
     The book was about a couple main characters, Avis, Sybille and Rose. It was MAINLY told from Rose's point of view, but we also heard from the others, as well as a few other characters. I wasn't a fan of the random one time POV's we got from some of the supporting characters. There was literally no point in having them if we only cared about their point of view that one time. I also recall one specifically that gave us tricky information that made it seem like something big was going to happen, and then it didn't.
     So Sybille and Rose come from the countryside to live in the court of Queen Elizabeth, because Sybille was supposed to marry the son of one of the important families living there. Rose comes along as her lady-in-waiting in a way. They were supposed to be best friends, but Sybille did nothing but treat Rose like an ant under her shoe, and she also acted completely unhinged and psychotic a lot of the time. I was left sitting there thinking, "Is this girl for real?" Somehow, the three main girls get caught up in a competition from Queen Elizabeth that entails each of them throwing a big party, and the winner gets to go on some sort of trip with her as her lady-in-waiting I believe? I wasn't totally sure what the point of trying to win this championship was, even at the end when all was said and done.
     So without giving away any endings, I'll give you a few less revealing thoughts. I really hated the first chapter of this book completely. It was appalling, and totally useless for the rest of the story. We literally could've chopped it off and started the story at chapter 2 and it would've been completely fine. There is also still an insane amount of editing that needs to be done, and I wasn't even looking for problems. I was constantly finding bad sentences, such as this one: "Still Fulke wondered if his mother's advice to him advice was truly helpful." It was pretty irksome. I was also really fed up with how much the characters called each other trollops and harlots. Like really, that is not necessary ANYWHERE. And how much of this time period was even researched? Nothing seemed very realistic to me, as far as how anyone, from bum children running around on the street to the Queen,  acted, or how events were played out.
     It was a quick read, and when all was said and done, I have no idea what even happened in the end. Nothing seemed resolved. It seemed like it was alluding to a sequel (which I will definitely not be reading) to get the answers. I did not enjoy my time with this book, but I didn't despise it, and I think the only reason I didn't get to that point was because it was short and I didn't have all that much time to get there! LOL. I will give it that. It wasn't filled with as much useless, boring, setup describing scenes as a lot of books are. You know the ones I mean. They are 300-500 pages and you know you could cut out a good 100+ pages and still get the full effect of the story without the aggravation of wasted time. If you want to give it a try, I've found it available for pre-order on Barnes and Noble.
     So there you go. Hopefully I don't dislike my second early review copy as much as I disliked this one! And here's to me also early actual physical copies and books from the big name publishers!