I don’t know what to make of this. Every possible rating has crossed my mind at some point while reading this book.

The story starts when 7 year-old Jude opens the door of her house to a strange man, who kills both her parents and then claims to be her older sister’s father. Turns out he is no man at all, but Madoc, general to the High King of the Fae, and Jude’s older sister Vivi is indeed his heir. So after killing their parents, Madoc takes Vivi, Jude and Taryn (Jude’s twin sister) to Faerie. Fast forward 10 years and that’s where chapter one takes off.

That beginning got my full attention. Human girls growing up in the land of the Fae and being raised by their parents’ killer is a story that has a lot of potential. I especially liked the fact that our protagonist isn’t “the chosen one”, it’s her sister Vivi who’s the daughter of the King’s general, Jude being taken to Faerie is just a side effect of that.

Okay, so things look promising. Then what happens during the first half of the book? A big fat nothing. We’re shown how the twins are bullied at school and how Vivi despises her father and wants to go back to the mortal world. Then Jude decides to stop bowing her head and starts fighting back instead, which somehow leads to her becoming a spy for the Crown Prince. The issue? None of this is really justified, it just sort of happens and you’re supposed to roll with it.

Then somewhere around 50% or 60% in, the coronation takes place, since the High King has decided to step down, and that’s when everything goes downhill and fun things start happening. Although I do feel that all the different courts that came together for the coronation could have been used better, or just used really, because it seems like they were just there to take up space.

So yeah, story-wise for the first half of the book there was no objective, nothing to look forward to or a reason that really kept me reading. I must say, though, that I wasn’t bored either and didn’t feel like the whole thing dragged, it was a pretty quick read. But the second half of the book was much better, since things were actually happening and there was something at stake.

Now let’s get into the characters. No one is fully likeable except maybe Vivi, which isn't a bad thing in itself, perfect characters are boring.

So you can see how my thoughts are conflicted. The story itself was good, it was an entertaining read and it didn’t drag by any means but I was expecting so much more. I just wasn't investend in the whole thing. The stakes aren’t high enough, or don’t even exist, for most of the book and the characters lacked development, especially their changes in personality need to feel less like, well, changes in personality. It’s called a character arc and not a character jump for a reason.

I just feel the same way I did when reading Throne of Glass, and not because my brain seemed to be comparing everything to a SJM book (let’s not go there because there are some similarities I don’t even want to talk about), but because  Throne of Glass really disappointed me (I think more than this one did) and then I ended up loving the rest of the series. So I’m just going to hope the same magic happens here.