I found the book incredibly awkward in its pacing, its dialogue, the interactions between the characters. The concept had potential, I liked the idea of different kinds of Fae and the idea of Light, but the execution of the story itself seemed to fall short for me. By the end, there were so many different twists being revealed, one right on top of the other, that it all felt forced and too much, like the author just wanted to pack as much shock as possible into as few pages as possible. The one aspect that I did enjoy though was the poetry. Noa, the main protagonist, is a poet and so some of the descriptors that she put to things and to people were very exciting bits of imagery and her poems throughout were all extremely well-done, my favorites in particular being Lost Girls and Mermaid Hearts.

Definitely a lot of potential, but failed to hit the mark for me personally. I won't be reading the rest of this series.

Highly enjoyed! Having just come off of a YA book that flopped for me, I went into this one with skepticism - and was pleasantly surprised! I enjoyed the magic, I enjoyed the characters, I loved the conflict created by the Game among the relationships to be found. I'm pretty sure a lot of inconsistencies could have been found in the set-up of the Crown's Game, but before long you're so into the story that you don't even think about it! I also had a guilty pleasure for the presence of so much potential romance without the story ever becoming purely a love story. And it proved very successful in providing solid suspense in regards to how the Game would end. Would recommend.

The only downfall that I could find was that some of the subplots seemed incomplete or irrelevant. Aizhana, for instance, seemed to show great potential to be a pretty terrifying antagonist; however, by the end of the book, I was left simply wondering what the whole point of her presence was. The surprising reveal that she brought with her as a result felt flat and seemed purely for the sake of shock.