ARC Review: The Sin Eater's Daughter - Melinda Salisbury

Title: The Sin Eater's Daughter
Author: Melinda Salisbury
Pub Date: Febrary 24th, 2015
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Page Count: 336

Seventeen-year-old Twylla lives in the castle. But although she’s engaged to the prince, Twylla isn’t exactly a member of the court.

She’s the executioner.

As the Goddess embodied, Twylla instantly kills anyone she touches. Each month she’s taken to the prison and forced to lay her hands on those accused of treason. No one will ever love a girl with murder in her veins. Even the prince, whose royal blood supposedly makes him immune to Twylla’s fatal touch, avoids her company.

But then a new guard arrives, a boy whose easy smile belies his deadly swordsmanship. And unlike the others, he’s able to look past Twylla’s executioner robes and see the girl, not the Goddess. Yet Twylla’s been promised to the prince, and knows what happens to people who cross the queen.

However, a treasonous secret is the least of Twylla’s problems. The queen has a plan to destroy her enemies, a plan that requires a stomach-churning, unthinkable sacrifice. Will Twylla do what it takes to protect her kingdom? Or will she abandon her duty in favor of a doomed love?

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What I thought was going to be the best book ever turned out to be the complete opposite. Heaviest disappoint of 2k15. - Nova @ Out of Time

I'm going to do my best to not make this a 3000 word review. But I want to, I really do. There was so much about this book that made me want to run into a wall. Nothing about this review is positive. The only reason it gets a rating at all is because I'm not for the "no stars" rating.

Firstly, if you think this plot is about a badass girl who has a lot of power and all the action occurs, you are dead wrong. What this book actually is? Oh hi! I didn't see you there, Bella Swan. Twylla whines the whole book. I don't think she actually did anything at all. She just sat there and it was up to the other [crappily written] characters to haul her ass. Plus, she had these written crappy internal monologues that gave me a headache.

Twylla might be the Goddess Embodied, but I think Ashley's the real deal.

Next, let's go for the lies in the summary. The entire summary is a lie. And what frustrates me is that I can't give specific examples without spoilers, so you're going to have to trust me. Basically, the summary is an epic high fantasy that has a lot of thrill. The book, however, is a badly written episode of Gossip Girl with your favorite ship, Dan and Blair! Seriously, the romance in this book was sickening. Besides the fact that it was cheesy as hell, there was also BOTH instalove [he used the L word when they don't even know each other] AND a love triangle [Twylla, you cannot have both of them. Deal with it.]
But the more the merrier, right?

Let's keep going by talking about every character's uncanny ability to figure out the schemes that were supposed to be surprising in two seconds flat. This story features a few secrets and plot twists; they weren't even bad plot twists. How the bomb was dropped was what made everything go to hell. Do you want the character explaining what is really going on? If you answered yes, you're going to love this! But if you think this method is going to give you the "WHOA WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" feeling, you're dead wrong. Instead, I felt like someone SPOILED the book for me and it was the character. Like what the hell is that?
And worse, that happened a grand total of three times [at least!]

For high fantasy, the world building needs to be top notch. If it isn't, the book will most likely flop. This book went a different route. It sped through the fast lane by using huge amounts of info dumping. I was so confused in the beginning. It would be Twylla doing some wonky narration and then something she said would be a segway to an info dumped memory in the past. Like what?

Finally, the characters! I didn't like ANY of them. Save for annoying Twylla, they were all so one dimensional. I felt like they were all there to be Twylla's footstool and didn't really exist without her. There were a few characters that had potential but ultimately flopped.

All the truth though.

Funny, that's pretty much the entire book. I was willing to let the whole "sounds like Shatter Me but high fantasy" thought go, but this book proved to be something else entirely. And not something good. 

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Melinda Salisbury lives by the sea, somewhere in the south of England. As a child she genuinely thought Roald Dahl’s Matilda was her biography, in part helped by her grandfather often mistakenly calling her Matilda, and the local library having a pretty cavalier attitude to the books she borrowed. Sadly she never manifested telekinetic powers. She likes to travel, and have adventures. She also likes medieval castles, non-medieval aquariums, Richard III, and all things Scandinavian. The Sin Eater’s Daughter is her first novel.
She can be found on Twitter at @AHintofMystery, though be warned, she tweets often.
Her first novel, The Sin Eater’s Daughter, will be published by Scholastic UK and Scholastic Inc. in March 2015. She is represented by the amazing Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge and White.
She can eat more fondue than you and she saw The Grand Budapest Hotel 11 times at the cinema, in six different cities, across five different countries.