Review: Maestra

Maestra by L.S. Hilton
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

L.S Hilton’s Maestra is a book I’ve been considering reading for a very long time. It kept catching my eyes in the bookstores, but I always found myself turning away to become engrossed in something else. In the end, I decided to take the leap and grab it as the final book in a deal. It was time to quell the intrigue, time to see why my brain kept shifting me in the direction of the book.

If the truth is to be known, I wanted to be generous and give this book a two-star rating. I hate giving one-star ratings, feeling horrible when I do so. Despite my hatred of giving such a low rating, I find myself more willing to hand out one-star ratings than I am willing to give out five-star ratings. Nevertheless, it never makes giving out such ratings any easier. I held onto my conviction of being generous for a short period of time, but by the time I’d made it to the point where I was handing out a rating, sharing my rating with the online world, I realised I couldn’t do such a thing. This may not be the easiest one-star rating I have ever given, but I realised I couldn’t give it a two-star rating.

There was a glimmer of potential when I started this book, but the more I read the less I enjoyed. There was potential in relation to the class element, yet it quickly became overshadowed by repetitive comments from the leading character that seemed to push the deeper elements aside. There was potential in the mystery, yet it was never given the depth I like in such tales. There was potential in linking all the elements together, yet things were never as complex as I would have liked them to be and everything seemed to sit into too neat boxes. There was a point where this book was getting a three-star rating, when all the potential was clear, yet the rating dropped to a two-star rating and then a one-star rating as I worked ever deeper into the story and found the potential was never truly met.

I feel as though what could have been enjoyable with this one was substituted for attempts at being shocking. The sexual aspects in particular seemed to be an attempt at getting a response from the readers – it was neither shocking nor daring, yet it seemed to be desperately attempting such a thing, and the repeated attempts really pulled away from other more interesting elements of the story.

Will I be picking up book two? No, I won’t. If L.S. Hilton writes another series, or a standalone, I will be willing to give it a try, yet I have no desire to read more in the Maestra universe.

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