This just didn't hit me the same way The Folk Of The Air trilogy did. 

I really like Suren, and her story is heart-wrenching. But I found Oak to be pretty boring. His whole personality just didn't work for me. 

I also found myself bored more than once throughout this book. The story felt lacking and really slow, and there just wasn't a lot holding my attention for so much of it. 

I feel like there was so much scheming in the original trilogy, and I was constantly on my toes trying to keep up and figure out who was doing what, and I was obsessed. This one… kinda felt like a sullen teenage girl pouting around after her parents on a road trip she didn't want to go on… I'm missing so much from the trilogy that only made a few small appearances in this book.

I will say, the end really got me, the way that the end of all Holly Black's books get me and while I might not have been completely invested throughout the book, I'm all the way there now. I'm deep diving into book two and hoping for just a little bit more.

I read this with my daughter; we both truly believe that not enough good things can be said. 

The story, along with all of the illustrations, made for such a wonderful experience and an absolutely perfect story. 

We were absolutely swept up in the life of Hugo and Isabelle; into the magic of Georges. From start to finish, we were absolutely intrigued and couldn't get enough. 

06/21/2022 ☆☆☆☆
06/09/2024 ★★★★★

This was a really wonderful ending to this trilogy. 

I love Jude, and I really feel like I'm losing something with the end of her story. I even ended up liking Taryn, and I really didn't see a change in hell of that happening, but here we are. 

This book is so filled with scheming and everyone trying to trick and conive and go behind everyone's backs. It was so much fun, even with such high stakes. 

I loved seeing a more real side to Cardan rather than the mask that he's been wearing for so long. And getting to know The Roach, The Ghost, and The Bomb more. All of the characters are so well developed that I formed an attachment with all of them. Oh, my heart. Quick shout out here to Heather, too. My heart really hurt for her, and I'm so happy with where she ended up. 

I love the balance that this series has with the politics, and the relationship building, and the character development. It really doesn't get much better than this for me. 

06/20/2022 ☆☆☆☆
06/06/2024 ★★★★★

I found myself wishing that more was happening in the beginning of this book. I felt like there was a ton of politics and strategy and espionage going on, but not a whole bunch of action or plot. Then. BOOM. I got everything I was looking for. 

This book blew me away. Everything I think I know what's going to happen in this series, I am absolutely blindsided. 

I love Jude. She's really growing into herself, and into the court life and the spy life, and I can't get enough of her. 

I love Cardan for being as bad as bad comes and for absolutely keeping me on my toes. I have no idea who this male is, and it is killing me! I'm over here thinking this is a blossoming love, and he would do anything for Jude, and I'm just hit over the head with a ton of bricks. 

I even love to hate Locke (and Taryn, because just a big ol C word when she's not being pathetic and meek). 

This book was amazing. I cannot wait to see Jude come back because this girl is going to come back with an absolute vengeance. 

This is such a wonderful, cute retelling of Cinderella. Ella is so headstrong and determined, and I loved her so much for it. 

I read this book to my 9 year old daughter, and she couldn't get enough. She absolutely loved Ella and thought she was hilarious and fun. She also loved the little romance in there with Prince Char. She was so excited when he professed his love. This is probably the first time that romance has made an appearance in the books I've read to her, so I'm glad that it was well done and in a cutesy way. Enough so that I even had an aweeee moment. 

I like that Ella wasn't your typical princess, and so did my daughter. She was very relatable and down to earth. 

I loved the addition of all the different races and that we got to spend time around so many of them. It was so much fun. I will say that trying to read out loud some of the languages was an absolute nightmare. 

My only real con in this book was all the filler of diary pages and random extended dialogue. I found it unnecessary, and it really slowed down the story in some places. 

06/21/2022 ☆☆☆☆
06/05/2022 ★★★★★

I'm really not sure if this novella was supposed to endear me to (insert sisters name) or to make me like her less. or what it was supposed to accomplish. 

I loved getting the other side to the story so much. I really liked seeing how warped and cruel Locke truly is, especially after he was portrayed so well in The Cruel Prince. 

It really did little to make me care for Taryn. If anything, I liked her less after. I find her pathetic and whiny and insecure in all of the worst ways. 

Locke is the worst kind of Male, and I can only imagine what's going to happen with him and Taryn in the future. I only hope that she can truly learn to love herself, instead of relying on him to feel any kind of worth. 

06/16/2022 ☆☆☆
06/04/2024 ★★★★

Honestly, my experience with this book the second time around was drastically different than the first. I'm really wondering what kind of mood I was in when I got myself into it two years ago, because I really enjoyed it this time. 

I really like Jude. She's badass, although quite young and immature, and it really shows. I want to say that she has a ton of personal growth through this story, but I really don't think that she does. Her ego gets dropped down a peg or two throughout the book, so maybe that helps a bit, but that's the truth of it. I say that, but I still really truly do love her. Her “I won't back down attitude” has me entirely on her side and devoted to her, and I cannot be swayed (even if she is extremely gullible and naive and a little blood thirsty). 

It was nifty seeing her relationship with Maddox after everything, and I really enjoyed the familial story being told on the side of all the political stuff to the other. I think the two different sides of this book were really well blended. 

I think one of my struggles with this book the first go around may have been the schooling bits of it and the insistent bullying bits of it. I usually steer clear of  academia books or any books in a school type setting, as that's just not my thing. Especially when bullying gets added to the mix, I'm just not interested. So first read though, I maybe have hated it so much that it influenced my overall rating of the book  Second read through, I knew it was going to be there, so I think i put more of an effort into focusing on motivations behind Cardan and Locke, and I enjoyed my time a lot more. (Also, f*ck Locke). 

I felt much more emotionally invested this time. And my heart was entirely on the line. Mostly for Oak, I won't lie. I love the polotis in this book. I think they're done so well and not overbearing. I was never bored through the story, and I was always looking forward to what happened next.

I also really like that romance didn't take center stage. I really quite like it when my romance is a subplot, rather than the main focus, and I know it's coming, but for book 1, I think it was beautifully managed. 

I truly do love Holly Black

I really wanted to love this more. It's been on my tbr for a while, and I was really looking forward to it, but it just didn't hit the right spots for me. 

I didn't love any of our characters. Aoife rubbed me the wrong way almost the entire book. She's clueless. Constantly endangering people around her because she can't listen and comes off very entitled and whiny. 

Declan comes off super soft. And I couldn't imagine him as the pirate captain I was supposed to. I think it really hindered my experience with this book because I never took any of it very seriously. 

The addition of Cait’s character helped a lot.
Her parts were full of spies and subterfuge, and all of the things that I wanted from a pirate novel, but they were so short, I definitely didn't get enough. 

The rest of the time, I felt saddled with two extremely immature kids who were playing at being pirates. The romance between Aoife and Declan felt very forced to me, with very little chemistry. Other than one conversation with each one just bombarding the other, they hardly even really talked. And that one conversation felt like a 20 questions game and the author forcing the characters together. It just didn't feel believable. 

I will say (after all of those cons) that I loved the idea behind the Council and the Fae. The plot that this story follows is really great, and while I might not have loved the characters throughout, I absolutely loved the story.

I found this story to be very predictable. Nothing happened that surprised me. Basically, everything that happened in this book was glaringly obvious at every turn.

It was quite slow, with too many areas of the book where basically nothing happened. It felt like a lot of filler that didn't really accomplish anything. 

The characters were pretty shallow, and they each seemed to be given one personality point, and that was it. No one seemed to have any depth to them. Kit's mom likes art. So she's an artist. Agatha is a creepy Grandma, so that's that. The Florist guy is gay and likes flowers. Cafe girl can sing. There was just never enough of them for me to create a connection with anyone.

I also absolutely hate that the only explanation we get for Jack and the “monsters” and where they come from is that this is where they live, so this is where they are. I needed more. 

Also, I get the relationship with Kit and Bear. It made sense. It was typical and obvious how that was going to turn out, but I understand the need for it in the story. Her relationship with Sabelle? I don't understand it. Where did it even come from, and why was it at all necessary? It was rushed, had zero emotion attached to it, and made me roll my eyes at Kit, falling for these people right and left. 

I wanted more explanation of Jack and the monsters. I wanted more history than a short diary thrown in here and there. I wanted more spooky vibes, and all I got was an annoyingly secretive and vague grandma and sketchy whispering townspeople. 

A Sleeping Beauty tale made dark with changeling and faeries. What more could I ask for? 

I adored toadling. She's so sweet and kind-hearted, and her story was wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time.

Start to finish my heart was in this book, and it did not disappoint. There's a reason Kingfisher is an auto read for me