**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

One of those in-between books. I liked it more than not, but due to my lack of interest in the beginning, procrastination, and the fact that most Netgalley books expire after a couple months, I realized I had two days to read this, which after company came and we played Pinochle all day long, that meant a few hours of staying up in order to finish this. So I was reading a little faster than normal so I could go to bed darnnit. (Daylight Savings is brutal).

At its core, this story is all about family. Edna's brother is stolen away by a hag and replaced with a cogling, and come hell or high water, she's gonna get him back. Enter Ike, who has his own agenda but is willing to help Edna get her brother back. They become a thing, but it was handled fairly well, and was mostly put on the back-burner and the rescue/quash hag takeover took precedence. Which I mightily appreciated.

Also, it must be noted that hags and ogres are not your typical hags and ogres of folklore. These guys are all magical folk who got magic by living on a swamp and then they came back to the city, and whoops, everyone hated them now (because ewwww and magic) and banished them, and then the hags and ogres rebelled and won, and then THEY were rebelled against and quashed, and now some of them are allowed to practice magic to heal the elite, but are mostly scorned, and shocker, some of them would very much like to try for a hostile takeover. The females are the hags and the males are the ogres, and much like the non-magical humans, they can be either good or bad, though of course, with derogatory names like "hag" and "ogre", quite a bit of ill-will has been cultivated against them as a whole.

I guess I liked the overall idea of this book, but it failed a bit in my estimation in the execution. I didn't get a good sense of atmosphere, which with this world and the magic, would have been very nice to have. The world building in general felt rather one-dimensional, and the religion concerning the "Seven Saints" (which were mentioned frequently by both the hags and Edna) was vague at best. Not a bad book by any means, but not great either.

**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

What to say about this one...it's a tough one to talk about, in my opinion, because it's not bad per se, but not good either. (Ugh, these books are the worst to review.)

Mainly, I didn't care. I thought about giving up pretty much the whole way through, which is just never good. But some of the actual issues I had with this beyond lack of interest are that this is labeled YA but the writing, the dialogue, everything is juvenile, and not in a good way. Especially as the oldest MC is supposed to be 18, with the rest of them a few years younger, but they all pretty much have the same maturity level. Ellis was the best character, and there was a definite lack of the shapeshifter, alas.

Also, for being near 350 pages, it's actually quite surprising how basically nothing happens. For that reason, it also moves very slow.

Honestly, it's not terrible, but it didn't hold my interest, and is the exact opposite of what you might call memorable.

**An copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

How? HOW does this have such high ratings and favorable reviews? 'Cos this was so bad, you guys. Oh, I should have DNFed. There's an hour of my life I won't be getting back.

It started out, not promising perhaps, but not totally terrible, in a generic fantasy story marginally better written than if written by an average 12 year old sort-of way. And it continued in this vein for the next 350 pages or so, with the addition of about a bajillion hackneyed cliches, an honest to goodness Pixie Hollow (with accompanying names eg. Penelope Plumpleberry), and a terribad romance. Let's look at the story, noting some of the cliches, shall we??

(Okay, not all of this will be totally 100% chronological. I'm only human. And I was speed reading.)

Anyways, up till the last 60 pages or so, it was pretty darn bad, but it would have probably gotten two stars, because it was basically just a poorly written generic fantasy amalgamation of tropes and tween dreams when you'd daydream in your backyard about secretly being magical royalty. It wasn't something I would ever recommend, but as a wee girl with very few standards I might have even enjoyed it. Until Aurora and Rafe's gag-o-matic tripe of a "romance" was two-sided, and the plot went completely haywire.

Also worth mentioning is that this reads VERY middle grade, from plot to characters to the writing style, but then some bits felt more like they belonged in a YA? I think maybe this is one of those weird little books that was meant and marketed as YA but comes off as extremely childish and MG.

Thank goodness it's finally over.

The idea for this book series is pretty chill, and it even started out pretty dang well, but unfortunately, it had a few key issues.

The Melodramatic Romance: It is so utterly ridiculous. I think maybe this is the book I rolled my eyes at the most this year. Now just imagine a poetic flowery 16 year old boy obsessed with destiny and who thinks he's found his one true love, who also happens to be the Chosen One, the super-special, super-powerful (gorgeous!!) mage who will save the universe from the Bane.

Now imagine being privy to his every thought.

Imagine. The. Crap. He. Will. Think.

And not just think...say.

"My love, my sky, my destiny". (Actually, I think this line is from Book Two, but still, my copy of the book has been returned to the library, and this gets the point across.)

*gags*

I mean, I can take overly dramatic declarations of love, trust me, but not when it's coming from 16 year olds who used to make out with a fricking construct in, essentially, a dream world that he gave the appearance of his crush. (Yeah, I don't get it either) And not when it's put in that silly way.

But besides the melodrama, and Titus occasionally creeping me out, it wasn't that bad otherwise. The weirdest part about it was that I would go from "ugggggh" to "awwww" and back again every 30 pages.

The Pacing: Oh dear heavens. It started off promising, at a good clip and with enough going on with the introduction of characters to keep you interested. But the middle of the book just draaaags on and on, with very little actually going on in any way except for destiny talk and Titus being a strangely likable drama queen, and then the end picks up and resumes a normal and intriguing pace. But the middle is brutal.

Iolanthe passing as a boy: I find trouble with this, because Titus is constantly mooning about how beautiful she is, but apparently a husky voice and a cocky grin are enough to pass her off as a teenage boy, not just for a couple weeks, but over a great deal of time. In close quarters with a bunch of teenage boys. I just find this hard to believe.

Like, ew: The crude and lewd homosexual/sex/"wand" jokes scattered throughout were a bit distasteful, I'm just saying.

And as for the low rating, the rest of that simply resulted from me not really caring about where these kids ended up. And if I wasn't complaining about it, then whatever it was probably was pretty okay.

Oh, oh and I should mention the Crucible. The idea for the Crucible was very original and inventive and mind-twisty and something that every fantasy book probably aspires to have.

**An ARC of this book was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

While certainly not a terrible book, it simply wasn't doing anything for me. Mostly I think it was the tween-angst and the fact that the plot goes practically nowhere till page 250. But the ghosts were the best part of the book and a rather fun bunch, and the ending was lovely.

Full review to come closer to publication.