Review: A World of My Own by Becca Bates

A rough life leaves Marie desperate for a way of escape. When she and her secret crush find a portal to the magical land of Sonara, it seems she has found just that. Now, she has everything she could want except the sister she left behind. Determined to save her from their abusive stepfather, Marie sets out to bring her sister with her to a new home, but Sonara may not be the idyllic land she dreamed of.

Shona's review 2 of 5 stars

On the surface this promised to be a really good read. the reality was somewhat different. There were lots of different ideas that could have made this story great but the storytelling was rushed and nothing was really fleshed out.
I understand that short stories are supposed to fit a lot of stuff in with a limited word count, but they should also be fully fledged stories. There were no chapter breaks in this, or even what felt like different scenes, everything happened so back to back it felt like one giant run on sentence.

I hate giving spoilers for books, but sometimes when they are this short and you're not quite so taken with a character or their actions its really hard to describe why without spoilers, there is a point in this book when Marie needs to help someone, but a tiny comment from them see's her back off (and whilst I understand her reasons for that) she then seems to forget they were even there and doesn't mention it again.
Same thing with Sebastion... things aren't quite what they seem with him, however we get no insight until right near the end and even then it's rushed.

I really wish Bates would take some extra time and really develop this story, flesh out those characters, give them depth and turn it into a full length novel or something. It has so much potential. And I would read that.