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I was hoping to enjoy this as silly, tropey fun, and initially it met those expectations: it’s the written equivalent of a Disney movie, complete with spunky adventuring princesses, cute romances, and a paper-thin setting. Unfortunately, the fun wore off as the book insisted upon good-vs-evil morality while the actual portrayal is anything but. Pro tip: it’s helpful in a goofy fantasy novel if the “good�� guys value human life beyond their own, and aren’t simply out to crush the rest of society under their thumb.

Twin Crowns has a totally goofy premise, involving a twin princess switcheroo. Chapters alternate between 18-year-old twins Rose and Wren (but, miracle of miracles for YA, in the third person past tense!): Rose has been raised as princess of Eana, not knowing she has a sister, while Wren was spirited away at birth and raised by her grandmother in a hidden community of witches, preparing to steal Rose’s identity and crown. The book kicks off with Rose’s kidnapping and Wren’s impersonation of her, and follows the twins in each other’s places as Wren tries to make the charade work, Rose discovers facets of her world she hadn’t been taught, and each begins to fall for a smug warrior dude. But the evil regent has plans to get rid of “Rose,�� and of course, shenanigans ensue.

Given the premise, I naturally picked this up expecting nonsense, and for the first third or so was thoroughly satisfied. The plot moves briskly, and the alternation between the two viewpoints works well. Yes, it’s far-fetched and silly and works best if you picture it all happening in Disney animation, but it captures the magic of Disney: the princesses are spunky and entertaining, there is humor, the best-known tropes are there, cute animals appear to understand human speech, the dialogue feels right out of Frozen or Tangled, and I loved those movies and was happy to engage with the book on that level.

You do have to overlook a lot, from the horses that gallop for hours to the world’s most easily infiltrated dungeon. The royalty thing and the quasi-medieval thing are both purely aesthetic. All the characters think and behave like modern Americans rather than products of this (very thinly-drawn) setting. And of course the politics make no sense. However, it’s fair to say that the setting of Frozen is also wallpaper and withstands no scrutiny, and while that perhaps works better in a children’s movie than in a fairly chunky novel aimed at an older audience, as long as I was enjoying the characters and their story I was willing to accept it for what it is.

Sadly, it wasn’t to last. Enter the witches.

The witches, we are told, are Good, and anyone opposed to them is Evil.

The problem is, there is nothing actually good about these witches. They are persecuted, yes. But that isn’t the same thing. And what’s more, I can see why. Their powers are terrifying to a regular person, and they have absolutely no notion of ethics. Of the five types of witches, only one (healers) are pro-social, while another (seers) are whatever. Then there are the warrior witches, who are as they sound; the tempests, whose localized weather magic is exclusively shown being used to drag people about against their will, kill them by throwing them off of or into things, and destroy buildings; and the enchanters, whose wide range of powers includes the ability to falsify people’s identities and tamper with their minds. And anything the witches can do, they do in fact do without compunction.

Not only that, witch culture (realistically enough) is incredibly toxic. Their goal is to take over the kingdom for the benefit of themselves, and they talk loudly and often about how the rivers will run red with the blood of anyone who stands in their way. They are one step away from a Master Race theory of why they deserve to rule and no one else matters, and that step consists entirely of vocabulary. Ideologically and emotionally, they’re already there.

Now, I certainly don’t oppose including a dysfunctional group of fascists in a book, and exploring how to reintegrate the witches into society could be fruitful ground for storytelling. I assumed the twins would have parallels arcs in which Rose realized that witches are still human and not 100% evil and need to be incorporated into the kingdom somehow, while Wren realized the dangers of revenge and witch supremacy and that other people matter too. And that while Rose realized that the regent has manipulated her and raised her as a tool for his own ends, Wren would realize that the same is true of her grandmother.

But only one of those arcs happens. Rose has a rapid and complete personal transformation, in which she inexplicably becomes a partisan of the witches despite the fact that most of them—including her own grandmother—treat her poorly, with a youth cadre even trying repeatedly to murder her. Meanwhile Wren doesn’t grow or change at all, because who cares that the witches are violent fascists, they are persecuted and that makes them Good. The double standard is wild: a witch kills people gleefully and we’re supposed to sympathize with her; their enemies kill angrily, and that’s why we should hate them. (Hatred is acceptable, but only if not directed at witches; toward witches it means you’re a bigot, never mind that these people have every rational reason in the world to hate and fear them.) Grandma Stormfront over here orders something that will hurt someone, and she’s a strong leader making a tough but necessary decision; the regent does the same, and it shows that he’s a monster.

So given all that, why should Wren be sorry for helping kidnap her sister and attempting to steal her life? Apparently, there is no need for this, because Rose promptly forgives despite Wren’s lack of repentance, making their relationship feel entirely unearned. And the bad guys don’t seem quite as bad as intended either; there’s a throwaway comment that the regent is “respected across Eana,�� which apparently isn’t supposed to affect readers�� judgment of him at all but which definitely affected mine, especially when the twins seem wildly unprepared to govern. (Rose at least has good intentions, which in a story like this is meant to be enough, but Wren doesn’t even have that.)

My second biggest disappointment, upon finishing this book, was that it’s definitively not a standalone, so possibly the sequel is meant to unpack all this. But it seems unlikely, when the book pushes the Witches are Good viewpoint so hard that character decisions and feelings only make sense when you accept that as a premise. Also, speaking of the ending: I feel that a book that describes itself as a “rom-com�� has some obligation to actually resolve the romances by the end. This book does not.

So in the end, this proved to be a disappointment that I can’t recommend, despite a promising start. I knew it would be nonsense! I was here for nonsense! But nothing ruins my fun faster than moral dissonance, and Twin Crowns failed to keep my sympathy where the authors wanted it.