First Read of the Year: "The Prison Healer" - what a disappointment

I started 2023 with a YA fantasy novel called The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni. I must preface this by saying that this book (or rather trilogy) was not on my radar at all. I had seen the book around but had no intention of reading it. However, going through my bookshelves at home, I discovered that I owned a special edition of book 3 in this trilogy and rather than get rid of it, I decided to first give this series a chance.

This book embodies pretty much everything I do not like about young adult fantasy books. First of all, as far as the setting, you can tell from the title that our heroine is a prison healer. She was imprisoned along with her father when she was just seven years old. Right off the bat, I felt that the author was not giving us all the background information needed. Because the reader feels the need to find out what happened, they are compelled to keep reading.

Secondly, the pacing of the narrative is awful. There are pages filled with the main character's indecisive inner monologue when literally nothing happens. This monologue also repeats itself every few pages - I ended up skim reading towards the end.

Finally, and this is my biggest gripe with this book, crucial information about the main character is withheld from the reader until the very end. Mind you, the book is written from one point of view, we are literally in this character's head the entire 400+ pages and yet critical information about this character that explains her motives is disclosed on the last page. Perhaps, younger, less experienced readers are wowed by such a revelation, but I felt cheated by the author. This was a cheap literary trick that I did not appreciate, in fact, it frustrated me to no end.

As you can tell, at that point, I already firmly decided I would not continue with the series, however, I did look up the reviews of books 2 and 3 and they follow a predictable story arc of a YA fantasy romance - lots of self-doubt, angst and poor communication until the very happy end. What an utter disappointment 1 star (and I almost never give such low ratings to books).