When a freak plane crash kills her sister and the heir to the witches' coven, Katherine Thompson has to step up for the role she was never prepared or trained for. Now being the heir of Sandersville coven, Katherine has to learn how to deal with the people and creatures around her, something which she had previously had little to no knowledge about. Faery wars, trolls who are depressed, unicorns, daemons, and various other strange fairy-tale like creatures are just some of the things Katherine know has to deal with. When her cousin goes missing, however, Katherine learns the darker side of the coven, and things that she never knew about her mother, the Queen...things she was protected from.
This book. What can I say...? I don't know where to begin really. I'll just straight up say that I did not enjoy it, unfortunately. At all. When I read the description on Good Reads, it sounded pretty all right. Witches and trolls and daemons, for starters, sounded like a good fantasy sort of novel, and the main character being a 16 year old girl made it a bit YA...two genres I usually love. But then I started reading and I wanted to give up after several pages. Katherine as a character didn't win me over. I didn't like her personality, nor her voice in the story, and the way she did things, and thought things, it was just all a bit...odd.
The story is set in the modern day, except that there are obviously witches and other fantasy elements to it, which would have been great, and I can see that being a cool concept and story, but it just didn't work very well. There were depressed trolls who lived under a bridge, and faery who were poisoned and dying off, and then there were unicorns and daemons...and then, to top it all off, there were were-peacocks! What the heck is were-peacock? Ah well.
The story line itself wasn't really one that drew me in either. It's in the first few chapters that Rose, the sister, dies, and Katherine picks up her responsibilities. But those 'responsibilities' just sort of seemed like a selection of small events that she had to do, or meetings with depressed and angry singing trolls, and sort out. There wasn't really a captivating story line...and her cousin doesn't go missing until the last chapter or two, so it's not even about Katherine using her newly found heir-dom and connections with various fantasy creatures to try and get her back. There are more in this series, so I assume that will happen then.
And the writing style was rather confusing at times, and it could have done with another edit. I have to admit that I ended up skimming some bits because I just wanted it to end. I could have easily become a book that I didn't finish. Really sorry for such a downer review, but you win some, you lose some...right?
I do love the cover though! So that's positive...
But please don't let me stop you reading it! Read away, my friends. Tell me what you thought, and we'll chat. You can now get this book on Amazon.
Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with a copy of this book for an honest review.
This review was written by regular reviewer Anjali, get to know her here.
Image from Good Reads.
