The Bone Wars by Erin Evan

Description from Goodreads:

Rome, A.D. 306. Emperor Constantine converts the Roman Empire to Christianity. Over the next two decades, his armies destroy pagan idols across Europe and the Middle East.

England, A.D. 1830. Paleontologist Mary Anning writes to Sir Richard Owen, describing a fossil that she discovered in the cliffs of Lyme-Regis. She writes that the fossil is a large wing made of black bone.

Montana, A.D. 2022. Sixteen-year-old Molly Wilder discovers a mysterious fossil while on a summer internship. The fossil has a large wing structure, horned skull, and black bones. Neither famed fossil-hunter Derek Farnsworth nor renowned paleontologist Dr. Sean Oliphant can place it in a recognized dinosaur family.

For 65 million years, the Badlands of Montana have held a secret hidden in their depths...

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My Review:

I received an arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I really really wanted to like this book. I loved the idea of paleontology being a huge premise of the book and having a bit of mystery in there. I can tell the author either did a lot of research or this is her profession as there was a lot of specific information in the book. While most of it was interesting, it did feel a bit like info dumping at times.

It was the characters though that ruined the book for me. There were too many points of view. Especially, when they all sound the same. I kept forgetting whose's point of view the chapter was in. This should have just been written in third person honestly. The characters were a bit one-dimensional as well. It's like the author picked two personality traits for each character and that was their whole persona. There was no depth or really any character growth.

With the mystery aspect of this book, it felt way too easy. Everything either came naturally to them or they had just amazing luck and stumbled upon clues. I didn't get to feel like I was solving a mystery about their unknown dinosaur bone.

The idea was there. If the characters were a bit more developed and the plot a bit more thought out, I think this would have been an amazing read. Overall, if you are easy to please and like fossils, this is the book for you. It just wasn't enough for me.