Review copy provided by the publisher for an honest review.

This is one of those books where I don’t have anything new to add to the discussion board. Everything that I want to say has already been said. I don’t know whether that’s a bad thing or not, but either way, this is pretty much what we’re all agreeing on:

1. This book is incredibly feminist… and that is awesome! This isn’t the usual YA fantasy or retelling. This isn’t about the girl who needs to be saved by the prince or the story of a warrior girl learning her to embrace softside by falling in love with the handsome prince. This story is about an orphaned girl who is being exploited and abused by her awful stepmother and stepsisters… and deciding to do something about it. She’s realising she’s the only one that can get herself out of this situation and uses her mechanical know-how (despite the world telling her that isn’t a suitable hobby for a woman) to build wares to sell at the Market. She plans to raise enough money to open her own business/workshop and become independent. Awesome, right? It’s so refreshing to have an ambitious female character that doesn’t get distracted by romance. She sticks to her guns and decides she wants a better life so goes out and gets it. *applauds*

2. ... but this book was a boring as drying paint. Feminist themes aside, Mechanica was about a girl building stuff and it. was. so. damn. slow. It wasn't exactly anti-climatic because a climax was never reached in the first place. It was just deathly slow and monotonous the whole way through. The writing didn’t help because it was a little over-the-top. Some of the descriptions just went on and on forever and ever. I could only read this in little spurts. I just kept getting distracted.

Some other small thoughts:

• Female friendship done right! Seriously, this book hit all the feminist marks by a mile.
• Info-dumps. The first 30% of this book was the character recounting her childhood and explaining the political situation with the fey. Not exactly the way to grip an audience. I almost DNFed it.
• The secondary characters - particularly the Steps - could have done with some fleshing out. I liked that the author didn’t slut-shame the Evil Stepsisters (because that happens way too often) and actually gave them some qualities that almost made me pity them… but I wanted to understand them more.
• I liked how unique this race of fey was but I wanted more about Nicolette’s world instead.
• There was a reveal towards the end (

that Caro and Fin were royalty, not servants like they said

) that made me question everything… but not in a good way. I think it made some things that happened in the book previously impossible? I don’t get how it all works now.
• The cover is to die for! I love the level of detail (so many references to the book within the artwork) and the colouring is on point.

Overall? It’s kind of hard to judge this book. I liked what it tried to do. I loved the feminist themes… but my God, it was so damn boring and I had problems with the world-building. I did love Nicolette as a character but I needed more from this world. I hear there’s going to be a companion sequel so I’ll definitely check that out but yeah, I’m disappointed that I didn’t love this one.