This was a beautiful but strange novel told in verse about a boy who cannot be with his terminally sick mother because he himself is struggling with a very nasty bout of pneumonia.

For me it was a bit of a surprise this was in verse, since I expected a normal novel. However, I do think that it allowed to convey the story well. There are a lot of short poems in there, and while some of them would work out of the context of this novel, most really fill a role in this particular story. So, it did take me some time to get used to it, but after a while I enjoyed reading it. The utter sadness of the story came across as well as the little signs of positiveness near the end.

A good read.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

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I had really high hopes for this one. The description sounded great and I previously read and really enjoyed The Girl From the Well books by Chupeco. I wish I could say I enjoyed Wicked As You Wish but it just never really grabbed me and if I'm being completely honest it ended up feeling like a chore to finish it. This is one of those times that I wish I was more of the DNF camp because it would have saved me weeks of dragging my heels through this book.

I'm trying to think of way to adequately describe what this story felt like, and the best I can come up with is it reminded me of leftover surprise. You know that ramshackle meal you throw together when you really need to go shopping or you're feeling kinda lazy and you just grab a bunch of random ingredients that are still good and you have on hand and throw them in a pot with broth or a casserole and call it dinner. This book was like that to me. Insert a handful of fairytale characters, a dash of legends and mythology, a pinch of hot topic social issues, a sprinkle of different cultures, and a side of LGBTQ. Voila, dinner is served! All of these on their own are wonderful ingredients, brought together they can make one incredibly tasty dish, but in this case it just didn't work for me as a cohesive recipe. Nothing quite married or really brought it all together.

It ended up feeling like instead of bringing these elements together in a new exciting way pieces of them were just mashed together but never quite fit as a whole. Getting thrown into the fantasy world blind at the beginning was jarring, which could have been ok for me if I understood it more as we went on, but honestly even after the end I'm still confused by it.

When the fantasy end falls short a reader can sometimes turn to the characters to carry them through, some cool peeps to get behind, or someone to root for. When I inevitably turned there I also felt like something was lacking. None of these characters were stand out for me.

Maybe the most interesting to me was 'the Scourge of Buyan' which seemed unfortunately used more to try and make Tala somewhat interesting rather than an intriguing character on its own. Ryker maybe being a younger version of that could have been something but we really didn't see much of him, especially not much beyond the surface level of his high school crushiness that dominated the beginning.

All in all this was just not for me, as much as I wish that wasn't the case. Definitely not something I'd be interested in continuing as a series.

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I received an ARC of this book from SOURCEBOOKS FIRE via Netgalley and this is my honest review.

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So, because of how it made me feel in that way, I wouldn't recommend it to fans. Don't bother with it, it's really not lif-changing if you skip it.
Or don't, and maybe you will feel differently and be excited by it. To each his own.

I've wanted to read this book for the longest time now, and I'm finally doing it. I'm so glad – I must have been 9? 10? the first time my sister told me to read it. It was (and still is, to this day) her favorite book, and a universal classic. She loves Gabriel García Márquez, and I still remember vividly how sad she was the day he died. Staring at her books, knowing there wouldn't be others. 

Now I've finally begun this journey – and so far I'm loving it. The beautifully built magical realism and strange –but profound– characters have pulled me into the book in a way I didn't expect. I lived in Colombia for a while and I have Colombian family, so it's also a lot of fun reading about the jungle-town environment and the historical changes throughout the novel. I expected this book to be slow, since at least in my school, it's a mandatory read and some people complain about it, but I was positively surprised to find that I can read several dozens of pages and barely notice it. It's different to what I usually read, and I love it. 

Well, I still got a long way to go. So far, I'm happy with what I have found!