Seasons of the Storm by Elle Cosimano | ARC Review

Title: Seasons of the Storm

Author: Elle Cosimano

Series: Seasons of The Storm #1

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Romance

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publication date: June 23rd, 2020

Pages: 480

My rating:

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One cold, crisp night, Jack Sommers was faced with a choice—live forever according to the ancient, magical rules of Gaia, or die.

Jack chose to live, and in exchange, he became a Winter—an immortal physical embodiment of the season on Earth. Every year, he must hunt the Season who comes before him. Summer kills Spring. Autumn kills Summer. Winter kills Autumn. And Spring kills Winter.

Jack and Fleur, a Winter and a Spring, fall for each other against all odds. To be together, they’ll have to escape the cycle that’s been forcing them apart. But their creator won’t let them go without a fight.

“This is the one night you’re not leashed to that place. The one night you don’t have to answer to anyone. Don’t lose that nerve. 

I was so excited to read this novel because it had such a unique and interesting synopsis, and I thought it was something right up my alley, so I couldn’t wait to read it, and I went into it with pretty high expectations, but unfortunately I think this is one of those cases where the concept sounded super cool but it was poorly executed.

I think the story had a pretty interesting start. It didn’t take me long to get into it, and I was so intrigued from the very beginning to see where the story would go, but as I continued reading the book I became less and less engaged with it and started to lose interest in the plot and the characters.

My main issue with Seasons of The Storm was that there was barely any world building and the magic system was so lacking. It’s supposed to be set in our world, but there was this ™magical™ organization that controlled the weather kind of, and there was no information about it at any point of the story. It seemed like there were different people controlling each season, but the author didn’t take any time to actually explain what each characters could do in each season, and their limitations and powers, and I think that could have added a lot of depth and more information for the reader to understand more this world.

“Those who’ve seen a glimmer of your past may try to anticipate your choices, but unless they know your heart, they will always choose the future that suits their own needs.”

My other issue was regarding the characters. I think, that despite our two main ones having an evolution throughout the story, nothing else happened to them. We barely got any information about their backstories and their interests and what they were like, and they were just so lacking in so many aspects. I didn’t connect with any of them, and I think that their arcs were so simple and boring that I lost interest in them before I reached the half mark of the book.

There was some romance in this book as well, and I just wasn’t the biggest fan of it. My main problem was that because this kind of relationship started before the book started, and these two characters had already had feelings for each other, there was barely no build up so that it could be believable. These two characters didn’t had more than two interactions when we knew that they loved each other, and their dynamics were just so off and sometimes forced that my brain couldn’t understand how they could love each other when they had no chemistry whatsoever.

“We know how the story’s supposed to end. But what if it doesn’t have to?”

Something that I really enjoyed was the friendship formed throughout the novel with certain characters. I love me a good friendship and I think that what they were willing to do to protect one of them was pretty nice.

The ending was a little bit of a let down. I feel the plot dragged a lot and not much was happening before the big scene in the last few chapters, and though I was hoping it could redeem the book a little bit for me, sadly I wasn’t super impressed with the outcome.

Overall, I think Seasons of the Storm had such a strong and intriguing concept, but its execution lacked a lot of things. The characters were pretty boring and one dimensional, and the plot ended up not being what I was expecting, and I ended up being disconnected with the story and the characters.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This doesn’t change my opinion whatsoever. All thoughts are my own.

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