A cute love story AND a fun Christmas story all in one.

I love a fairy story set in the modern world. I loved the circus and how quickly the reader is thrown into the action; tensions are high from the very beginning and stay strong throughout. Though I could do without the confusion of Vivienne's memories muddying the beginning (seriously, how did she not know that her "best friend" was a lesbian) and her crush on the annoying Kingston. Can't wait to read the second one to learn more about her past.

The punctuation and grammar issues were horrendous but she lost me at "calvin cline". If you can't be bothered to double-check that it's Calvin Klein, I can't be bothered to suffer through your book.

This was so bad I genuinely can't believe anyone liked it.

No historical accuracy whatsoever and no detail because Shea clearly couldn't be bothered to research anything.

Britt's behavior was so unrealistic; she was either trying to convince herself she was in a coma dream or she was pitching a fit with no in-between. She'd be going along happy as anything, then pick a fight with an important fairy, then act all smug, then sobbing all over again.

And you really expect me to believe a modern young woman could fight fully-grown knight warriors and kings and win after a few months of training?

Britt never had an internal thought; she was constantly saying dumb shit out loud and everyone around her kept asking what she said.

But the greatest sin is how fucking boring this is. 

So boring.

This book has a lot of potential, but really needed an editor. The pacing of the story felt off; there wasn't a consistent ebb and flow, it was either drawn-out tension or cutesy interactions. It didn't help that the story was so closely focused on our four characters that there was no chapter-to-chapter tension: it just felt like one ongoing scene. Same for the writing itself; the sentences had a tendency to have the same length and rhythm so it was hard to read more than a chapter or two at a time.

The lack of world-building also made it less fun. Multiple times Sagas described voices as unaccented, which kept yanking me out of the story. This is set in the far future where humans are living all over space. There is not any such thing as unaccented now and certainly not then. Sagas should have used the language and accent to help me learn more about the world. We got such a nebulous view of the world and it feels like Sagas just didn't care enough to plan out the details.

It's a very funny book and that's what kept me going. I love a found family story, and it had a lot of heart.

I saw the movie first, and honestly it was better. Brown's story is simple and cute, but the movie added so much depth and real affection to Roz's story that the book simply lacks. I enjoyed this, but it's not very memorable.

A solid adaptation for audio.

Just so boring. 70 pages in and there's so much focus on religion and they're all so pious I just can't continue.

Ah, the impeccable feminine rage of Lady Macbeth.

I loved the historical accuracy of this; Roscille is a woman in the 11th century and she understands the chains that bind her, and she does her very best to subvert them, but in a way that feels real and true. The writing zips you right along through the story. Even the parts that are hard to read are handled carefully. Highly recommend.