⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 3 stars
The Beholder is a story which followed Selah who is sent to other kingdoms with the objective to find a suitor, when the boy she wanted to marry refuses.

So, I got my hands on the beautiful Fairyloot edition of this book, without really knowing what it was about, but the cover is absolutely stunning! I wanted to read pirate stories/voyage stories this month, starting off with Daughter of the Pirate king, and seeing this cover it felt like a good match.

The story starts off with Selah, who is rejected and sent away by her stepmother to find a suitor so she can rule the island. Immediately the fairy tale inspiration was apparent. I love retellings or stories inspired by fairy tales, as I love fairy tales, so the feeling the book gave me in the beginning was a really good one!

The world was really confusing for me, I just couldn’t get a grasp on it, no matter how hard I tried. It was just super confusing how made-up names and familiar names were all thrown around. I still don’t understand if it was a made-up world or if it took place in the real world somehow. It really threw me off, I’d rather the author picked one or the other instead of a mash of both.

Another piece of the world-building/plot was this “land” (I kept thinking it was Russia which the author meant, even if it had a different name). Selah wanted to avoid going there as much as possible, as the ruler was evil and the land was “bad”. The problem with this was that it was only told and not explained why. If you tell me; A is bad, but don’t give me examples why A is bad, I’m not going to believe you or take your word for it. Selah’s fear of going to this land was thus not believable to me, so I didn’t really get invested in the story as she does everything to try and avoid going there, because I didn’t believe it to be as bad as was said.

I thus wasn’t really connected to the story and wasn’t the biggest fan of Selah. She seemed rather naïve and young. Also, some terms she used (like daddy etc.) threw me off a bit. It might also be that it just felt like that for me.

I really liked the little passages in between chapters from known and to me unknown fairy tales! It was also really nice to see them written in their original language haha. The passages give you a bit of a foreshadowing as to what’s going to happen, so it was nice to know which direction the story was going, but I would’ve liked it more if the hints weren’t as apparent.

The romance is another thing that didn’t do it for me. I am not a fan of insta-love, I want drawn out/slow-burn relationships which you see bloom over time. As Selah was only with the suitors for two weeks, it just seemed too sudden. She fell for the guys super easily which made me feel like she was a bit shallow. It didn’t seem like the characters really bonded or anything.

The ending took me by surprise. I hadn’t thought it would play out like that, but seeing there is a sequel I did think something dramatic was going to happen. The dramatic ending that happened, though, somehow didn’t seem to fit to me. it felt rather abrupt and out of the blue.

Overall, I liked the writing style of this story. It did draw me in, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the plot, characters and the world. The book just didn’t really make me feel anything, so I don’t know if I’ll be picking up the sequel.