Hawksmaid: the Untold Story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian

This book is so bad that it isn't even funny! I don't know how this book got published. I've read stories by my unpublished writer friends which are far better than this. I stumbled upon this book in the library, and checked it out because it looked intriguing. It's a juvenile book by an author that I'm familiar with, so I assumed it would be decent, and it was. But the story was absolutely horrible. My complaints could carry on as long as the book itself, but I shall narrow them down. The untold story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian obviously is going to have some romance in it. But the romance was awful! There are very few moments where their attraction shows, and when it does, there is no chemistry whatsoever. The dialogue is quite stilted. At the end, we have no reason to believe that they should get married, or that their love is real at all. Their attraction never passes the adolescent puppy-love stage, and barely reaches that, come to think of it. The beginning of the book was interesting enough, but soon it was just plain weird. It was difficult for me to keep up with what was happening, because the story seemed to go in several directions at once. Plot devices would appear one moment and be forgotten about the next. Nothing particularly exciting happened, and when something vital finally occurred, it was written in such a way that I had to re-read the paragraph to figure out what had happened. At first I thought I just must be dense, but after reading other goodreads reviews, it looks like I'm not the only one who had trouble keeping up with the story. The main character, Matty/Maid Marian, was an irritating "Mary-Sue" type heroine. She was good at everything and became a falconry expert practically overnight, even though it would take an ordinary person a long time to develop the new skill. Fynn/Robin Hood would make comments about "you can't do such-and-such because you're a girl", and she always had to one-up him. Sure, he shouldn't be demeaning; men and women should be equals. I know how it feels to get left out just because you're a girl. But the story isn't trying to teach equality. Instead, we were supposed to learn that Matty was BETTER than Fynn. He was the poor clueless male who had to be guided along. She had almost all of the good ideas, and pretty much orchestrated everything. I shall refrain from giving spoilers, but the end was extremely odd. Random, unexpected things happened all at once, leaving me confused. It's still fuzzy in my mind. The story was dragged to an unsatisfying conclusion, making me wonder why I wasted my time reading the book.