Book Review: Fun Fresh Fantasy

 


Title: Koru: The Trainer I Used to Know
By: Katelynn Balcom
 
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy-Romance
 
Review Rating: 3 ½ Stars out of 5
 
 
When I first started reading, I thought the book reminded me a little of The Princess Bride.  The similarities are in the book structure and roughly in the beginning plot.  Koru: The Trainer I Used to Know is structured as a story within a story—the main character is telling the story to an in-story audience.
 
The plot is a universal one of boy meets girl, boy does something stupid, and then boy spends the rest of the story trying to win back the heart of the girl.  Overall, it is well executed.  I feel that it could have had more depth in spots.  Also, the subplots could have used a bit more meat as well.
 
The characters shine in the story.  Gabriel, our POV character, narrates the story well.  We understand his motivation—as a whole.  This happens to be a place where I believe the story needs a bit more.  I would have liked to have seen more scenes of him actually falling in love with Koru.  That mostly happened off the page.  More sweet scenes between them would have made me feel his heartbreak when she rejected him in the beginning.
 
Koru, the love interest, has her own agency.  We understand her initial rejection.  She only falters at the end—another place that needs fleshing.  Koru forgives Gabriel for all his misguided attempts too easily.  Especially after what happened with her own father, her quick forgiving of Gabriel feels out of character.
 
The potential war subplot gets resolved swiftly.  There was a lot of good build-up to it.  Then, it just disappears after one battle.  There should have been another couple of chapters where the war subplot, the Captain Koru subplot, and the main plot could have merged.  That would have given satisfying resolutions to all.
 
I liked the stable setting with the Griffins.  The story felt fresh and yet lived-in.  The caring for these fantasy creatures added depth to the characters—main and side.
 
While I found Koru a fun read, I also found a smattering of grammatical and punctuation errors.  I have notified the author via email about them.  Since the book is not yet released, she may have time to make corrections.  Those combined with the above forced me to take off stars from the rating.  All in all, it is fun fantasy that I would recommend reading.


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