The Watchmaker’s Daughter

Before reading this book I was tentative. C.J. Archer’s work had popped up on my recommendations time and time again, but I read reviews that made me wary of her other two series. Not that they were bad works, only that I might not enjoy them. This series however really intrigued me, so I finally bit the bullet and bought the book.

The best thing about this book are the characters. India Steele was a great character to follow around, and I loved Mr. Glass’s cousin Willie as well and his Aunt. I even enjoyed Glass himself many a times. The idea behind the story was very intriguing as well. The actual writing style was good too.

What was off for me and why I ranked it so low was how oddly contrived it felt at time. It was almost like Archer had these beats that she was forcing herself to meet, as if she wrote those bits or planned out certain bits first and then forced certain parts of the story around it. There were scenes that felt jarring, some “foreshadowing” that confused me, and the romance made a huge jump from “no sexual tension at all” to “yes take me now” where naturally it felt like the main character would slap Glass or feel creeped out instead. I felt creeped out at least reading it.

It was odd, because if you took the scene out of context, it was very well written, but just the point it was placed in the story, with no proper build up towards it, it just felt weird. It’s almost like maybe the book wasn’t edited enough, strongly enough, or advise wasn’t heeded.

So I found myself torn at how I feel about this first book, yet oddly I’m still planning to read the next one. It might just be that Archer is not the most skilled at initialing character and plots, but very good at continuing them and drawing them out. And yes, the synopsis for the next book as well intrigues me as much as this one has.

Be aware that this book only sets up the characters and their problems. It moves slowly and never really gets anywhere. The last 30 pages are for a different story. I might get the next two books in the series from the library to finish the story,but I won’t purchase them.

and boring, occasionally ungrammatical, with an inconclusive ending. I found myself losing patience and skipping chapters.The only thing to admire here is the effort it took to write itmore than I could do, but still. I would not read any other books by this author, but if you want a gentle read with far too many words devoted to too little content, this is for you.

First let me say that I enjoyed the book. The characters are quirky yet solid. I cared about them. My main concern was the action. In the first book of this series the characters are searching for the creator of a watch. We reach the end of the book, after many dead-end leads, and the creator of the watch has not been found. Okay, I get that you might want to extend the story into the second book, but when I had read the second book of yet more dead-end searches and the creator still had not been found, I became bored. I do not know if I will purchase the third volume of the series. I really, really wanted to fall in love with this series.

This book was an easy read because the writing was good in terms of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

But I expected more after all the glowing reviews.

What I disliked:

1) Getting dumped immediately into action without any preamble.
2) Poorly developed characters.
3) Not having a clue as to what the primary female character looks like. Usually you get some kind of clue. I don’t like characters self-describing themselves, but it’s easy enough to get something across.
4) A rather abrupt ending.
5) A kindle book that ends at 83% of completion in order to spend 16% on a preview of another book (that I already read and didn’t like all that much). The remaining 1% was the author’s “thank yous” to various persons.

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