I finally managed to finish The Stone Forest. Luckily it got moving at the end, when Jenna decides in earnest to really start investigating what happened to Mandi. The solution mostly made sense, and the last quarter of the book was easier to read, so this meant my grade for the book was bumped up from D to C. However, this one still goes on my trade shelf. It was obvious, actually. It's not a good sign when a book takes you 2 weeks to read.

I had lots of problems with this book:

• The dialogue sounded wrong. Strictly the dialogue, the rest of the writting style didn't bother me. Gil (who's supposed to be English) was especially badly done. He sounded like an American trying to sound British and not succeeding very much. A couple of "bloodys", a couple of "blokes" is not enough. Incidentally, I'm no specialist on Brit-speak, but it seems to me you don't call someone "you bloke".
• Mace never really came alive to me. I never understood what made him tick. Jenna I did get, but he remained an enigma to the very end.
• The love story between Jenna and Mace was terrible. It made no sense. When he first kisses her, for instance, I went "huh?, What are they doing". The problem was probably that they had 0 chemistry together.
• Jenna sometimes behaved TSTL.

The only things that I liked were the setting (the caving expedition at the end of the book was great) and Mace and Jenna's occupations, which were fun and original. Otherwise, this book was a waste of time.