ŷ������

�� Gorgeous cover
�� Pace
🆗 Magic and world-building
🆗 Wren
🆗�� Convenient plot and over-simple politics and villains
�� Overall predictability and convenience
�� Rose
�� Romances

Unpopular opinion coming in. It’s not a bad book, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary or memorable, and nothing we haven’t seen before in YA. It’s just overall okay.

Rose Valhart and Wren Greenrock are twins who separated at birth and their lives could not be more different. Rose has no idea that she has a twin, and she was raised to be the perfect demure crowned princess. Wren is a witch and she’d known about her twin for her whole life. Wren’s plan is to take Rose’s place right before the coronation, so she can become queen of Eana and make sure that witches are not hunted anymore.

This book was disappointing. Both main characters felt very juvenile, and the plot was very simple, convenient, and predictable. Both romances were predictable, the politics and the villains�� scheming were predictable, and honestly, I felt that not much happened for the first 60% of the story, and then everything was rushed and the ending was just messy and over-the-top cheesy at the same time. The book mostly focuses on romance instead of the plot, and even if there are two romances developing, they both felt overly simple and predictable. The world-building was also simple and your usual YA fantasy book, nothing memorable or original.

I like that Rose and Wren both realized that there was more to the other than they previously thought. Rose realized that witches were not all evil and do not deserve to be hunted and killed, and Wren realized that her sister’s life is not all fancy parties and lavish life. There is politics involved, and Rose is more than just a spoiled princess. Besides that though, I can’t really say that I know the characters, or that I appreciate them. They were both childish at times, stupid at others, and both made me roll my eyes SO MANY TIMES.

Even the secondary characters were bland (except maybe Celeste), and seemed to have no purpose besides supporting the main characters, or being introduced as obvious love interests that we are supposed to like I guess, even though we know nothing about them, and they don’t have much personality. One of the two love interests was SO BLAND, he literally has no personality traits, not one, but that’s okay because he’s handsome and strong. 🙄

I didn’t care much for Wren because she was ordinary and bland, but Rose was SO ANNOYING. I know she grew up as a pampered princess, but she annoyed me so much with her constant reminder that she was the owner of all the land and her demands that the witches obey her when she felt threatened or challenged. I understand that she had no other means to defend herself, but it was made pretty clear from the start that the witches couldn’t care less about her and her status, so why the need to constantly remind everyone that she was their princess? It only made her seem petulant, and spoiled and did not make the witches respect her at all. Quite the opposite actually.

Rose and Wren are complete opposites, they dislike each other very much at first even though they never met. Wren hates Rose because she’s the crown princess who has been raised by the man responsible for the death of so many witches, and she thinks that witches need to be killed. Rose hates Wren because she is a witch, and she plotted against Rose to take her place as the crowned princess. Yet, when they finally meet, it takes a few minutes and a simple discussion and they are suddenly allies. Simple as that, they just trust each other and decide to work together. In general, they both trust other people way too easily. Wren just spilled the beans about the fact that she has a twin to an enemy, but she is not worried about him talking, because “she trusts him��, after knowing him for a few weeks only. They were both asking for trouble, it’s a miracle they managed to both stay alive.

The villains are generic and uni-dimensional. They are both power-hungry, and even worse, one of them just explains all his dark schemes and evil plans to Rose when she suggests that they push back the alliance between their countries for a few weeks or months. Rose and Wren just discovered the whole “evil plan�� and pertinent political alliances simply because people accidentally shared information with them, or simply because they asked and somehow people told them everything, and somehow they found a way to resolve everything even though they were both naïve and childish. Of course, there is one “tragic�� death that is meant to bring forth sadness and anguish I assume, but considering that this character, like all the others, was bland, boring, shallow, and most important of all, completely useless to the plot, I couldn’t care less if he lived or died.

Overall, this book was really underwhelming. I would probably have enjoyed it at 15 yo, but not at 27. I know it’s a YA, but I do enjoy some YA books even if I’m not considered a young adult anymore, but this one is closer to a middle-grade book than it is to a more mature YA or a NA book. The dialogues were awkward at times, both romances lacked serious development and chemistry to even begin to be believable, and this book as a whole was boring and juvenile. The characters lacked depth (big time) and were generally annoying and useless, and I skimmed the second half because I just didn’t care about any of the characters, the plot, or the cringy romances that were all SO predictable.


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