The Keepers - Review

Today I read a book by J.L. Block, The Keepers (no relation and not much in common with my own novel I'll add), which was given to me in exchange for a truly honest review.
You can see this review on goodreads or read it below.

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** spoiler alert ** 

4 Star Story
2 Star Writing

The Keepers by J.L. Block is a creative story that is entertaining and has a clear plot line. The main character, Ava, is a young woman who is struggling to balance her home life with her new found magical one and we the readers follow her on that adventure. The magical races and cities were creative and well explained when they were explained. The Keepers city and Ava's classes were described in a way that made them seem real enough. Most of the side characters were brought to life with simple enough motivations and personalities that distinguishing between the many of them was easy to do.

That being said the writing was hard to follow and was the weakest portion of the book. In the beginning I often found myself having to re-read sentences a few time to capture their meaning and overcome some editing/typo problems and the sentence structure was lacking the flow that makes it unnoticeable when reading.

Ava was written in a way that made her feel younger than her 18/19 years and some of her decisions lacked the motivation I was expecting given the scene build up. Overall she seemed to stagnate in her growth and I was constantly waiting for her to step up to the challenges laid before her as the book progressed and as it covered almost a year in time I would have expected more of a character arc.
The main plot was straight forward and clear though often left with holes and foreshadowing I am hoping to see filled in the next book.