I’ve seen several reviews say that this felt like Middle Grade instead of YA, and that’s why it doesn’t get as high of a rating. I honestly don’t understand this justification for a low rating, especially since most of the people complaining are fully-grown adult people...reading YA. Now, I’m not saying fully-grown adult people can’t read YA. That would be very hypocritical, considering I AM one. But I do find it strange that someone would knock stars from a rating because the book (in their opinion) skews younger than whatever they think of as ‘Young Adult’. And honestly, there are books labeled YA that have no business being marketed that way, so maybe that’s what they’re basing their opinion on.

Sorry, rant over.

Anyway, I personally enjoyed this book quite a bit. I love what Emily Lloyd Jones is doing in fantasy. Both with this book and also The Hearts We Sold, we’ve got interesting, flawed characters just trying to make their way through life the best they can, to varying degrees of success. I love that this, like THWS, is a stand-alone. Not EVERY fantasy book needs to be part of a 3, 5, 15 book series. It doesn’t have do exist in a universe with 5 other SERIES of books. Sometimes it’s okay to tell a story in less than 350 pages and have a beginning, middle, and end...

Wow, I am snarky today.

I loved the Welsh inspiration behind this story and the infusion of Welsh culture and mythology. This book had atmosphere for DAYS.

I also loved the characters and find it amazing that the author was able to give them such depth in such a short length of time.

One super nit-picky thing...the number of times Ellis says something ‘mildly’. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, but it happened twice in the same page. I noticed 6 different times where we’re told that he says something ‘mildly’. It got a little annoying.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait for her next.