Unfortunately not for me, I couldn’t get into this at all, I couldn’t connect with the characters or remain interested , might be for others but not for me sadly

I tried to get into this book a few times, but I found the pacing to be too slow, unfortunately it wasn't for me.

Sadly there were way too many trigger warnings in this book for me to enjoy it. A lot of main characters but at least the chapters were short. This was translated from German to English, but I don’t think that affected it much.

DNF. This book was way too slow for my liking. Also there was some odd scenes for a kids book. There was also a constant change of PoV which got confusing.

"Crow hadn’t stolen anything in a long time. It wasn’t that her sense of morality had changed after everything that had happened to her. But she just didn’t feel like stealing as often anymore. She had grown tired. Tired of her heart."
-Benjamin Lebert, Sign of the Eight

2.5🌟/5

I received this e-book from NetGalley.

Sign of the Eight is a dark fantasy book.

The main characters of the story, Martha and Tristan, have a past together, once lovers now enemies. They are in search of six people in total to fight "the final battle" with them. Martha's group is to protect humanity while Tristan's group is to destroy everything.

The author's writing is not bad, it's really not. However, I just did not enjoy the story!

I clearly was not interested in it and the more I read it the more I realised I wanted to finish it rather quickly (fortunately enough it wasn't an overly tedious book). There were too many characters, which for me, that in itself is not in any way an issue, nonetheless, the story moved so fast that I not only did not have the time to get to know all the characters but the plot overall, especially near the ending (while all the fighting happened), it felt quite rushed.

I already gave feedback several times but it keeps coming back to my page.

I liked it and will definitely read it again. It also made me look to the author and other stories

Sign of the Eight is your classic good versus evil, fight for the future of the world kinda story. We meet our two main characters, Tristan and Martha (evil and good, respectively) who have just come back to this world after 800 years. Their job is to find 6 fighters (hopefully 3 for each side, but not necessarily) in order to determine if the world will carry on as it is or not. We spend time with each of the fighters, getting to know their story and really care for them. They come from all walks of life, and each have a different desire for what happens next.

I think the premise of this book is good. I really cared about the stories these characters had and the lives they led. I think it’s an important story to introduce to teens to help them through their experiences that we don’t often talk about. My main issue with the story is the grand battle was terribly short and very anticlimactic. I think this story would have done better as a general fiction character study, rather than try to incorporate the fantastical element.

Content warnings for highly inappropriate relationships.

Overal, I give this book a 2.5/5 - rounded to 3 for goodreads. I just didn’t mesh well with the genre it was written in, and could have done stronger as something else. I really loved the character arcs though.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was advertised as a fast-paced dark fantasy, but I simply couldn’t engage with the book. It failed to capture my attention or my interest, which is unusual, since I love dark fantasy. Sadly, I was quite bored. It’s not that the writing is done poorly; indeed, the writing is finely done. But the rest of the book isn’t just as well done.

Thanks to Arctis Books and NetGalley for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. Due to my personal policy, this review will not be posted to social media since I rated it under 3 Stars. I will also not be posting this review on Amazon at this time because there are currently no other reviews on the title and I would not like to have this low review be the first review for the book on a large bookseller’s website.

This fast paced and incredibly captivating fantasy was a wonderful story that took no time to read. When a gateway to a world of the past, of vanished names, hopes and dreams has opened in the depths of the Black Forest, two messengers come to the present from the immense sunken realms of time. A messenger of doom and one of preservation who used to love one another but now are enemies will have to fight one last battle to seal the fate of humanity.

Everything revolves around a mystical number that refers to infinity within this story which happens to be the number eight. Tristan and Martha must search the Black Forest to find six comrades-in-arms (allies for each of their causes) to join their fight.

I really enjoyed this story, and I think the author did this story justice in how this story was written. While it was fast paced nothing felt overly rushed to the point it messed with the story. Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this story.

This was a quick read, and while I expected to stumble a little since it is a translation - I felt like the translators did a solid job. The story itself was interesting as a premise but the execution was lacking. We never really had enough time with any of the characters in order to meet them and love/hate them. Each time the chapter changed it was a different POV which I enjoyed, but the whole book felt very rushed - and then the fight scene which I felt like were spending the entirety of the book to get to was disappointing. They showed up, a bunch of death occurred and then the book was over. The most interesting part was the beginning when we meet Martha, one of the main characters and she meets the old man.
There were really beautiful lines in the novel, and I did really enjoy the whole premise even though it could have been fleshed out a bit more. I bumped my rating up to a 3, because I'm sure some of the story and other beautiful moments were lost in translation.

this is a beautiful short story book the cover is ok but its a mix between multiple popular books so I think it fell short for me as I have read all the popular books and thought this was trying to ride on that high personally but I still thought it was cool.

The synopsis was interesting but when I started reading it, it fell short. There were too many povs and made it hard for me to follow. I felt like there were a lot of unnecessary characters that didn’t make an impact, so they should've been taken out or rewritten.

The final battle was a letdown. I really expected more from it. It was extremely short and poorly written. I felt like the concept of this book would have been better if it was executed a different way.

Though this was a really neat concept, honestly this book just wasn't for me. The writing style was iffy to me, and very choppy and it was a struggle to get into it. i also didn't love the relationship between two characters because mature and under-age relationships are not my jam. The story-line felt a little rushed, however if you like fast paced stories you could give it a try! There were a lot of characters to keep track of that really seemed kind of unnecessary. However if you can get past this, the combination of fast pace and short chapters does make it easy to pick up and put down throughout the day.

I'm sorry but I can't continue reading a book that starts with a student imagining his teacher sexually.

I hadn't thought of such a thing when I read in the description that they were lovers before and now they are enemie

DNF at 2%. I stopped reading when the opening scene depicts a sexual encounter between an adult and a 16 year old. Also, I was not a fan of the character from the first chapter imagining a woman powerless.

Honestly, this book should have included some type of content warning. There are many people who do not want to read books with adults having a sexual relationship with a minor. Not to mention, that's really not appropriate subject matter for a YA book. I was also highly upset by the blatant sexism in the little I read.

Despite the premise being interesting, I did not find that the story was as centred as I would have liked it. The beginning read more confusing than most high fantasies do, but the focus on environment and character emotions were rather brilliant. I rather enjoyed the jumps between characters and seeing how the story was beginning to unfold. However, the start felt slow and I didn't feel like much was emotionally happening until I was 25% or so through the book. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE slow starts but the payoff at the reveals felt a little forced. Would have much rather preferred seeing the storyline progress throughout several books.
I would still recommend this book for someone who wants to take their time with a multitude of characters essential to the storyline and love the mystery that is solving out how people are going to end up connecting to one another.

TRIGGER WARNING: death, abusive relationship, power abuse, violence, toxic relationship, mention of rape, slaughter and murder
“He knew her well. She showed up in his dreams”
“She knew the moment had dawned when this task must be accomplished”
I’m not going to lie … at the very beginning I struggled to get into this story.
But once you’re in, you can’t stop!
In a combination between fantasy and reality, where time repeats itself, good and evil fight against each other in a war that puts brothers and lovers against one another.
No one is speared from this and, you’ll have to make your own choices…
Sometimes you’re not protected even in your own family …
It’s been hard to read this book, especially given the amount of terrible examples of evil pictured in the story …
But following the characters, picking sides and hoping for a future, despite the loss and death of loved ones … can be inspiring… no matter their age!!
Star-crossed lovers designated to face each other again after betrayal and terrible pain … hundred of thousands of year later !!!!
A great fantasy story that was really fast-paced and could trap you between the pages, suffering with some of the characters and hoping with others!!
“Death gladly welcomed all those who fled”
“‘Talent for what?’
‘To start something’
‘Like what?’
‘The end of the world’”

dark tense fast-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75

This was an interesting read: a battle to decide the fate of the world in the hands of eight people, two who had been the epicenter of everything. Brother against brother, lover against lover, *Sign of the Eight* is a fresh take on the battle between light and darkness—and the grey area that humans fall into.

I did not expect a lot of character development, seeing as the synopsis promised eight and the novel length only a little over 300. It was nice to read in between classes to turn off the academic break. I don’t know how it is written in German, but I rather enjoyed some of the prose in this translation. There were a few that seemed a bit clunky (I would even say crude at times) but I understand there will always be discrepancy when translating and that may have been the case.

The premise was intriguing, however it felt both rushed and dragging at the same time.

Dragging in the sense that there were scenes that felt overly detailed but did little to contribute to the main plot or to the character development - which were little to begin with. Scenes such as that of Tristan seizing the policeman’s brother’s sword and giving the policeman a long monologue on his attraction to the local schoolgirls, the old man throwaway describing Martha’s nipples (he thought of her as Isabel’s age then), and other sexual scenes that the book could have done without and still had the same impact. There was a lot of scenes with Tristan and Martha, which is understandable as *they* are why the battle is around in the first place, but considering there were six other fighters with them, it would have been nice to have gotten more development from them aside from their introductions and the occasional POV switch.

It was rushed as the main fight, the fight the entire book was leading up to, was very very short and not as gratifying as I hoped it would be. With so much backstory of the two lovers turned mortal enemies it had not been them facing each other off in the final battle. Yes they did face off, but neither of them dealt the decisive blow of the fate of the world.

I did appreciate the full circle ending, and how Zoe and Fynn were somewhat versions of Martha and Tristan. Zoe switching to Tristan’s side at the last moment and finding clarity just as they were opening the door of death was the answer to all of Martha’s ‘what ifs’ if she had stayed with Tristan in his descent to madness.

Overall a very quick read that’s hard to put down and a little harder to stop talking about. If you are keen on reading, I do caution you to look up the CWs and TWs as there are topics/imagery/scenes that are may be disturbing.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing me this ARC via NetGalley. This does not in any shape or form influence my review on this book.

This ain’t it.

So we start off with a teen student being seduced by his student teacher, have the female main character state, apropos of nothing, that her coat makes her feel sexy, and then an old widowed man has trouble keeping his eyes off the nipples of an injured girl in his late. wife’s dress.

Nah. I am not interested in reading unnecessarily sexualized women. The make gaze is strong with this mess.

This one just fell short for me. I thought the synopsis was great and was so excited to read it. I feel like the execution was just bad. In the limited pages there was no way to get 10 POVs across and it just made the book hard to follow. The characters never really fleshed out to keep me invested. The ending just made the whole book collapse.