Title: Fairy Tale Reform School: Flunked
Author: Jen Calonita
Genre: MG Fantasy, Fairy Tales
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Release Date: March 3rd 2015
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Source: eARC received from publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Would you send a villain to do a hero's job? An exciting new twisted fairy tale series from award-winning author Jen Calonita.

Full of regret, Cinderella's wicked stepmother, Flora, has founded the Fairy Tale Reform School with the mission of turning the wicked and criminally mischievous into upstanding members of Enchantasia.

Impish, sassy 12-year-old Gilly has a history of petty theft and she's not too sorry about it. When she lifts a hair clip, she gets tossed in reform school-for at least three months. But when she meets fellow students Jax and Kayla, she learns there's more to this school than its sweet mission. There's a battle brewing and she starts to wonder: can a villian really change?  


As I have said MANY times over the years, I am sucker for Farit Tales and so this was a book that was not really a retelling but more of a alternate universe type of book. In Fairy Tale Reform School: Flunked we follow Gilly who is the daughter of the showmaker. But ever since Cinderella's glass slippers got popular and her Fairy Godmother dicided to make them with the flick of her wand, they have been broke. So Gilly took matters into her own hands and started to steal things for money, they way they can eat. But in this new Fairy Tale world when you get caught doing something illegal you go to the Fairy Tale Reform School. A place run by reformed evil witches that we all know and love.

What I think I liked the most about this book was its immagination. The idea behind this book is brilliant. I loved that the author took characters we know and turned them on their heads, and made them into something both different but yet still familair. Gilly was a great main character, she was funny, sarcastic and little deceiving. She was nosey and wanted to know everyones business but in the end that went to her advantage.

This book was extremely fun to read and a fast read as well. I believe I read it over a weekend. I really loved the characters, they were all so well done and memorable. I do think this book should be part of a series because it feels like Gilly and her friends at the Reform School could get inot trouble at every turn so it would be really fun to read. This book is Middle Grade so it reads younger and there is no romance, which was a nice change for me. I think if you are looking for great world building, immaginative stpry telling and great characters this book is for you!

Hello everyone! I am so excited to be a part of the Canadian Blog Tour for The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows. I want to preface this review by saying I have never read anything by Jodi (GASP! I know, but that is rectified now) and I am so sad that I never did because she is an author that I will now read for life. She is amazing and Orphan Queen is amazing, for so many reasons. Anyways enough of my rambling, here is my review!






Title: The Orphan Queen
Author: Jodi Meadows
Series: The Orphan Queen #1
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Release Date: March 10th 2015
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Source: ARC preovided by publisher for Blog Tour in exchange for an honest review

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Wilhelmina has a hundred identities.

She is a princess. When the Indigo Kingdom conquered her homeland, Wilhelmina and other orphaned children of nobility were taken to Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. Ten years later, they are the Ospreys, experts at stealth and theft. With them, Wilhelmina means to take back her throne.

She is a spy. Wil and her best friend, Melanie, infiltrate Skyvale Palace to study their foes. They assume the identities of nobles from a wraith-fallen kingdom, but enemies fill the palace, and Melanie’s behavior grows suspicious. With Osprey missions becoming increasingly dangerous and their leader more unstable, Wil can’t trust anyone.

She is a threat. Wraith is the toxic by-product of magic, and for a century using magic has been forbidden. Still the wraith pours across the continent, reshaping the land and animals into fresh horrors. Soon it will reach the Indigo Kingdom. Wilhelmina’s magic might be the key to stopping the wraith, but if the vigilante Black Knife discovers Wil’s magic, she will vanish like all the others

Jodi Meadows introduces a vivid new fantasy full of intrigue, romance, dangerous magic, and one girl’s battle to reclaim her place in the world.  



Before I get into my review I have to say something about this cover, because seriously it is GORGEOUS and screams amazing fantasy. And boy it was not wrong. This book is one of the best Fantasy YA books I have read in YEARS.

I think the reason this book resonated with with me more than others was the main character. Wil has quickly become one of my favorites because of how true she is to herself and how much she loves her kingdom, even though she no longer rules it. Wil is fierce, independent and immensly loyal, t the point where sometimes you question her disciosns haha. But Wil would no be the character she is in the novel with her surrounding characters and boy were they great. Melanie was a great friend for Wil but we see her character grow into something very different from Wil near the end and that causes some friction, obvioulsy. Then there is Patrick, the leader of her little rebellion and a character that I thought I would love but eneded up hating. So there is that. Don't let me forget to mention Black Knife, one of the most interesting characters I have read in a long time. I loved how he interected with Wil and how their characters seems so very different in the beginning but in reality they were more alike than they thought.

Hidden Romance.I love this part of the story because you know its coming. These characters have one of the best relationships I ahve read on paper. They are snarky, funny and sarcastic to each other and I loved it. Unfortunately I figured out the twist at the end pretty quickly but jonestly I dont care. The book itself was so good that I was enthralled from beginning to end and I still wanted to see where Jodi took these characters and their story.

The world building in this book was epic. I loved how similar it felt, but still had that element of the unknown. Jodi has this talent of making her readers want to be a part of her worlds and this book is no different. I loved how she took a genre mostly everyone is familair with and turns it on its head and makes it into something spectacular. I loved every minute of this book I cannot wait to read the Novella's because they will be the only thing sustaining me until Book 2 comes out!

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Title: Red Queen
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Series: Red Queen Trilogy #1
Genre: YA Dystopia, Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Release Day: February 10, 2015
Publisher: Harper Teen
Source: eARC received by publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review


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Graceling meets The Selection in debut novelist Victoria Aveyard's sweeping tale of seventeen-year-old Mare, a common girl whose once-latent magical power draws her into the dangerous intrigue of the king's palace. Will her power save her or condemn her?

Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood--those with common, Red blood serve the Silver- blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.

To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard--a growing Red rebellion--even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.


I am always weary about big hyped up books because I always go in with too high expectations and then they always fall short. But I knew I had to read Red Queen because if I didn't I would be part of the amazing discussions going around twitter right now. And I am so glad that I did read Red Queen because this story was amazing from start to finish.

Bryn Aven is an outcast among the Kanin, the most powerful of the troll tribes.

Set apart by her heritage and her past, Bryn is a tracker who's determined to become a respected part of her world. She has just one goal: become a member of the elite King’s Guard to protect the royal family. She's not going to let anything stand in her way, not even a forbidden romance with her boss Ridley Dresden.

But all her plans for the future are put on hold when Konstantin– a fallen hero she once loved – begins kidnapping changelings. Bryn is sent in to help stop him, but will she lose her heart in the process?

Title: Messenger of Fear
Author: Michael Grant
Series: Messenger of Fear #1
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Release Date: September 23rd 2014
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Source: ARC received from publisher in exchange for an honest review

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I remembered my name – Mara. But, standing in that ghostly place, faced with the solemn young man in the black coat with silver skulls for buttons, I could recall nothing else about myself.

And then the games began.

The Messenger sees the darkness in young hearts, and the damage it inflicts upon the world. If they go unpunished, he offers the wicked a game. Win, and they can go free. Lose, and they will live out their greatest fear.

But what does any of this have to do with Mara? She is about to find out . . .


This book was high on my list because of who the author was, and i was so happy that I got a copy of the book to review. The concept of this book was crazy interesting and I knew I wanted to read it right away.

I think what I liked the most about this book was the fact that it touched n the subject of bullying without being over the top. I honestly didn't even realize what this book was really talking about until I was about half way thorough the book. When you see the main character having to doll out punishment to those who have done wrong to someone or something, it takes a minute to see what the author is really trying to say. Should those that do wrong be punished, and if so, to what extent. I think that aspect of the book was the reason I kept reading this book, because it was such a great things to talk about and it makes you think as a reader.

I did feel very disconnected from out main character and narrator. I felt like we were just seeing everything through her, and we didn't really get to see her, you know what i mean? I felt more for the secondary characters because we saw more of their story and therefore I could relate to them a bit more. I think it would have been better if the narrator was done in the third person and not first person because then we would not have been so pressured to feel for our narrator who was really hard to relate to when she had no memories of who she was and what was happening to her in the book. And since we were hinted that there was a hint at the end, I figured it out way too early and therefore that took away from the OMG moment that was supposed to happen at the end.

Overall Messenger of Fear had a great concept and dealt with some great subjects that needed to be addressed ad they were done in great ways. But ultimately I felt disconnected from the main character and the story she was trying to tell.

Title: Mortal Danger
Author: Ann Aguirre
Series: Immortal Game #1
Genre: YA Paranormal/Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 372 pages
Release Date: August 5th 2014
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Source:  eARC received from publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Revenge is a dish best served cold.

In Ann Aguirre's Mortal Danger, Edie Kramer has a score to settle with the beautiful people at Blackbriar Academy. Their cruelty drove her to the brink of despair, and four months ago, she couldn’t imagine being strong enough to face her senior year. But thanks to a Faustian compact with the enigmatic Kian, she has the power to make the bullies pay. She’s not supposed to think about Kian once the deal is done, but devastating pain burns behind his unearthly beauty, and he’s impossible to forget.

In one short summer, her entire life changes and she sweeps through Blackbriar, prepped to take the beautiful people down from the inside. A whisper here, a look there, and suddenly . . . bad things are happening. It’s a head rush, seeing her tormentors get what they deserve, but things that seem too good to be true usually are, and soon, the pranks and payback turns from delicious to deadly. Edie is alone in a world teeming with secrets and fiends lurking in the shadows. In this murky morass of devil’s bargains, she isn’t sure who—or what—she can trust. Not even her own mind.
 

This book was very high on my TBR list because the cover was amazing and I am a sucker for books set in a boarding school. So when I got the chance to review this book I was super excited. But sadly this book fell short for me because it was nothing like what I expected.

The beginning of the book started off on a weird foot when we watch as our main character, Edie try and kill herself by jumping off a bridge, but then Kian shows up, saves her and changes her life. What I think I had the most trouble with in this book was the fact that it was centered around beauty and how if you are not as pretty as someone else you will not be noticed kind of irked me. And the fact that Edie could not get her revenge on those that made fun of her until she was as pretty as them made me question her a character. I understood her motives but then again I did not like the way she handled it in the end.

There was a great mystery element to the boo which I loved and it involved students disappearing and ending up dead, and for me that was a large part of why i kept reading it because I wanted to know what was happening to these characters and if it was in any way connected to Edie and Kian. And Kian. In the beginning I thought Edies "love" for him was a little too much too fast and I kept rolling my eyes at them, but as the story moved forward it kind of grew on me and I liked them together even though it felt a little forced.

Overall I liked Mortal Danger but in the end I was left with more questions than answers and I couldn't really connect with the character because I didn't feel like they were genuine enough for me to connect with. Mortal Danger was an interesting read with many intriguing qualities but in the end it just wasn't for me.

Title: Midnight Thief
Author: Livia Blackburne
Series: The Midnight Thief #1
Genre: YA Fantasy Adventure
Format: Hardcover, 376 pages
Release Date: July 8th 2014
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Source: eARC copy received by publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Growing up on Forge’s streets has taught Kyra how to stretch a coin. And when that’s not enough, her uncanny ability to scale walls and bypass guards helps her take what she needs.

But when the leader of the Assassins Guild offers Kyra a lucrative job, she hesitates. She knows how to get by on her own, and she’s not sure she wants to play by his rules. But he’s persistent—and darkly attractive—and Kyra can’t quite resist his pull.

Tristam of Brancel is a young Palace knight on a mission. After his best friend is brutally murdered by Demon Riders, a clan of vicious warriors who ride bloodthirsty wildcats, Tristam vows to take them down. But as his investigation deepens, he finds his efforts thwarted by a talented thief, one who sneaks past Palace defenses with uncanny ease.

When a fateful raid throws Kyra and Tristam together, the two enemies realize that their best chance at survival—and vengeance—might be to join forces. And as their loyalties are tested to the breaking point, they learn a startling secret about Kyra’s past that threatens to reshape both their lives.

In her arresting debut novel, Livia Blackburne creates a captivating world where intrigue prowls around every corner—and danger is a way of life.
 


When I picked up this book I felt hooked right away. The world was extremely well done and I loved getting immersed in it, and finding out how the characters would live in such a world. The writing in this book was phenomenal, I loved everything about the way the author described this world. She created a world that took me by surprise and I loved it until the very end. Another aspect of this book that I loved was the main character. Kyra was strong, fierce and extremely loyal and I loved that the author created her as our main character because she was such a great person to read. although she was not perfect, I mean really what character is, I loved watching her navigate her mistakes and figure out what works for her and stand up for what she believed it.

I did however, find that the first half of the book was better than the latter half. I found the tone of the second half was very different from the beginning. I found myself disconnected from the characters in the second half and I really don't know why. I just wasn't as into the story as i wanted to be. But I will say that the dual POVs were a great way for me to get to now all sides of the story and for me to get an overall perspective on the story and I really liked that. It also allowed for a male perspective to the story and I loved that, it added something very different to the story.

As for the end, I was a little unsatisfied because I think I was expecting something very different. There was a reveal at the end that left me a bit confused and I think it clashed with my expectations of what would happen in this story. I can't really say anything else because I will ruin the end. Overall this book was a very interesting read with great world building and great characters that helped move the story along. But sadly I was also disappointed in the latter half of the book and how it ended. But this book would be perfect for anyone who loves Fantasy and/or adventure books!

Title: Dark Metropolis
Author: Jaclyn Dolamore
Series: Dark Metropolis #1
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Release Date: June 17th 2014
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Source: eARC received from publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Cabaret meets Cassandra Clare-a haunting magical thriller set in a riveting 1930s-esque world.

Sixteen-year-old Thea Holder's mother is cursed with a spell that's driving her mad, and whenever they touch, Thea is chilled by the magic, too. With no one else to contribute, Thea must make a living for both of them in a sinister city, where danger lurks and greed rules.
Thea spends her nights waitressing at the decadent Telephone Club attending to the glitzy clientele. But when her best friend, Nan, vanishes, Thea is compelled to find her. She meets Freddy, a young, magnetic patron at the club, and he agrees to help her uncover the city's secrets-even while he hides secrets of his own.

Together, they find a whole new side of the city. Unrest is brewing behind closed doors as whispers of a gruesome magic spread. And if they're not careful, the heartless masterminds behind the growing disappearances will be after them, too.

Perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare, this is a chilling thriller with a touch of magic where the dead don't always seem to stay that way.


I went into this book with no real idea of what to expect. I was drawn in by the cover and the setting because it seemed so different than most of the other books I have read this year. I will say that I really enjoyed the first half of the book. It was fast paced and I really enjoyed the setting. It was extremely detailed in the beginning  and at times I felt real. I also really enjoyed the characters in the beginning, they were easy to relate to and great to read. But as the book wore on, I felt like everything kind of fell apart for me.

For one, the type of narration was not for me. It was an all knowing kind of narrator and I am more of a first person kind of reader. I felt very disconnected from everything I was reading. Also, because there were so many characters that were introduced over the course of the book (which in an of itself was very confusing) I found that this type of narration confused me as a reader. I couldn't connect with many of the characters, and since we got so many different POVs I felt like I was confusing some characters with others.

Honestly, I felt like the second half of the book was quite slow and i felt like it dragged in many places. I went into this book expecting one thing, and about half way through the story took a turn I was not expecting. I felt like it was too different from the tone of the beginning of the story. I honestly felt like I was reading two different stories matched together.

The end, although action packed, was not as engaging as I was hoping. so much happened in the end, a lot of action and suspense, but I think because I didn't have a great connection with any of the characters, I didn't feel the gravity of the deaths and injuries. In the end, I felt like this book was not for me and I was a little disappointed with the outcome.

Title: One Past Midnight
Author: Jessica Shirvington
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary, Alternate Universes
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: July 22nd 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Source: eARC received from publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is...

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.

With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?


I love this author so much, so when I saw that she was writing a standalone book I knew i needed to read it. What I think I liked the most about this book was its departure from Jessica's earlier series. This book has nothing to do with angels, it actually is about parallel universes and a girl who lives in both.

The concept behind this book was amazing. I loved reading one character in two worlds. You could see how different she was acting in both worlds, it was kind of like seeing two different characters in one, and I loved it! Sabine was a great character to read because she was so easy to relate to. In each world she was in she has issues that all teenagers deal with, parents, love, pressure from friends, pressure from the future. All of these things are areas that impact any person at any point in their life, and watching Sabine go through these aspects of her life made for a great book.

As a reader I did prefer one world over the other, and to be honest I am surprised at which world I chose because of what happens to Sabine within it. In YA there is always the treat of a love triangle, and i will say that there is kind of one in this book, but to be fair, they are in different worlds and they are VERY different. We have Dez who was extremely forceful and liked the idea of love more than actually falling in love. Then we have Ethan, my new book boyfriends BTW. he was smart and sweet and dedicated to Sabine and her way of life. They could not have been more different and I loved how you could see the different in Sabine when she was with each of them.

Secondary characters are crazy important in this book because they let you remember which world Sabine is in, and honestly they were great to read. The parents especially because in one world they made me so angry that I wanted to throw the book against the wall. All of the secondary characters in this book have purpose and I loved that, they all contributed to the story and where it was headed.

The end was both heartbreaking and uplifting. I really cannot say much else about it because I will give it away but lets just say I shed some tears, and yet when I finished reading the book I found myself smiling. Jessica has a way to do that and I recommend this book to lovers of contemporary lovers because to be very honest this book has a very contemporary feel...minus the jumping worlds thing (which is very minor part of the book in my opinion). This book is more about Sabine and her relationships in both worlds, more than her jumping from world to world and I think that is why I loved the book so much.

Title: The Falconer
Author: Elizabeth May
Series: The Falconer #1
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 378 pages
Release Date: May 6th 2014
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Source: eARC provided by publisher via Edelwiess in exchange for an honest review

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Heiress. Debutant. Murderer. A new generation of heroines has arrived.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1844

Lady Aileana Kameron, the only daughter of the Marquess of Douglas, was destined for a life carefully planned around Edinburgh’s social events – right up until a faery killed her mother.

Now it’s the 1844 winter season and Aileana slaughters faeries in secret, in between the endless round of parties, tea and balls. Armed with modified percussion pistols and explosives, she sheds her aristocratic facade every night to go hunting. She’s determined to track down the faery who murdered her mother, and to destroy any who prey on humans in the city’s many dark alleyways.

But the balance between high society and her private war is a delicate one, and as the fae infiltrate the ballroom and Aileana’s father returns home, she has decisions to make. How much is she willing to lose – and just how far will Aileana go for revenge?


YA books that include Fae in them can be very tricky for me. They can be very hit and miss and if they are a miss, they are a MISS. So when I read the synopsis for The Falconer, I was hesitant because I did not want to hate this book. But what happened was the exact opposite. I fell in love with this book from the first page, because we meet Aileana and from the moment she started to narrate I knew she was going to be fierce and a great heroine for this book.

The main reason I loved this book so much was Aileana, she was fierce from the very beginning. She knew was society wanted her to be and she wanted to be the exact opposite. She had so much passion for what she was doing, and that was killing Fae. Her reasoning behind killing these creatures was great. Well not great for her, but a great back-story for us readers. She had so much hatred to these creatures, and i believed it. I felt it through every page of the book and that made me love her even more. Aileana was tough yet extremely creative. She made her own weapons, which was bad ass, and she was so confident in her abilities that any man who thought she couldn't do something, she proved them wrong.

The setting for this book was brilliant. I loved the time period of Victorian times and the inclusion of "some" steampunk elements. It was great to mesh so many different genre together, and the best part was that it worked. I never felt like I was confused to not understanding the world because the author did an amazing job of including us in its description. The way she weaved together, historical fiction, steampunk, and fantasy/paranormal was brilliant and I don't think it would have worked with any other story. Because everything about this book was perfect.

The secondary character in this book were brilliant. Each had a purpose and each made a difference to the story. I think my favourite of these characters was Aileana's faery that lived in her closet. He was the comedic relief and a great character for a story that was very dark and dreary. There is a sort of love story in this book but it was not the focus, which was refreshing and it was slow building, which was also very refreshing. Lastly I need to talk about the villains. Although they were not present all the way through the book, I thought they were done quite well. I know that they will be more present in coming books, so I am very excited to get my hands on them!

Title: The Kiss of Deception
Author: Mary E. Pearson
Series: The Remnant Chronicles #1
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 489 pages
Release Date: July 8th 2014
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Source: eARC provided by Publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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In this timeless new trilogy about love and sacrifice, a princess must find her place in a reborn world.

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.


This book was a surprise hit for me. I hadn't really heard much about it, but I was sucked in by the amazing cover and the synopsis. I am sucker for fantasy so I knew I needed to read this book. The Kiss of Deception is about a young girl who is forced into a marriage that she doesn't want, and therefore wants nothing to do with it. She runs away from her family and her kingdom and madness ensues. This book was full of rich detail and characters that I fell in love with from the very beginning.

I don't know if it was my mood while reading this book, or just the way it was written, but I found that the beginning lagged a bit, and I found myself waiting for the story to begin. After I got over the hump that was the beginning, I fell into this story and could not stop reading. I loved Lia more and more as the story ran on, I loved that she wanted nothing to do with her old life, and wanted to know what it felt like to be free of her kingdom and being a princess. I also loved reading her eagerness to have responsibilities that did not include looking nice and being diplomatic. I loved her character growth in this book as well. she started off a little winy, but really what do you expect of a girl who was given everything in life, but the more time she spent away from the kingdom the more she grew to love the small village she ran away too.

I loved that we got 3 POV's in this book, one was Lia of course, but there was also the Assassin and The Prince. We meet both of these characters through Lia as well, but she knows them as Rafe and Kade. What I think I liked the most about this book was that although we knew these two character, and we knew they were the Assassin and the Prince, we didn't know which one was which. Which made reading them that much more enjoyable. I wanted to know who was who, and I kept looking for clues as to who these characters really were and i have to say that i loved the way the author revealed it. It was great!

Now many people are saying there was a love triangle in the book and that it was too much too soon in this series. But although I agree that both of these boys had their moment in the sun with Lia and yes they both kiss her. I think there is a clear winner in Lia's eyes. I could tell with the way she talked and her actions that she clearly liked one more than the other (I will NOT say who!) and I think that doused my hatred for love triangles in this book. Since I knew that one was the favourite, and I totally support her choice btw, I was okay with these two boys fighting for her.

Everything about this book was amazing. The writing was brilliant and descriptive, the main characters were brilliantly written with depth and emotion that you loved to read on every page. The secondary characters were just as amazing and gave this book even more depth and character. They were what glued this world together and I loved reading them through Lia's eyes. I also loved that there were some fantasy elements in this book but they were not overwhelming, and I know that there will be more inclusion of fantasy in the next book, which I cannot wait to read!

Title: The Queen of Tearling
Author: Erika Johansen
Series: The Queen of Tearling #1
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 448 pages
Release Date: July 8th 2014
Publisher: Harper
Source: eARC received from publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for a honest review

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On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.

Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.

But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend…if she can survive.

The Queen of the Tearling introduces readers to a world as fully imagined and terrifying as that of The Hunger Games, with characters as vivid and intriguing as those of The Game of Thrones, and a wholly original heroine. Combining thrilling action and twisting plot turns, it is a magnificent debut from the talented Erika Johansen.
 

Fantasy book can bet very hit and miss for me because I do not read it as much as I should. So when I saw that The Queen of Tearling was getting all kinds of buzz, and it was an adult read, which I need to read more of, I knew I had to pick it up and review it. And i am so glad I did because this book was perfection.

Since I have not read a lot Adult reads lately, I knew going into this book was going to be a interesting feat because I knew the writing would be more complex and the story itself would be more in depth and since it was Fantasy i knew that the details would be amazing therefore I knew that I would need to take my time with this read. And I was right. I read this book at a much slower pace than usual and I savored every word because the writing was absolutely to die for. The vivid descriptions and the characters interactions made for an amazing adventure and I loved every second.

Kelsea is our protagonist and she was a great character to read because although she did not grow up in a kingdom and everyone around her thought she was weak and would not last as their Queen, she proved them wrong. She grew to be a very fierce and independent character throughout the book. I also loved how we not only got to see through Kelsea's eyes but also through many different characters who made this book as amazing as it was. I think I loved this book so much not only because of the character but because of the world. I felt so connected with this world that although had some elements of our own, was still extremely different. I loved the setting and how much it affected the characters throughout the book.

Overall The Queen of Tearling was an amazing read. I seriously cannot say a bad word about it and would recommend it to everyone who not only loves fantasy but great writing as well. This is a perfect book for those young adults who want to stretch into the Adult Fiction world because Kelsea is only 19.This book is so perfect  for so many readers to discover this amazing book and it talented author. I cannot say how much I loved this book, I have no more words.