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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Beautifully told fairy tale filled with enchantment, curses, and (of course) a love story.
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Super cute fantasy story that is perfect if you want a little adventure and magic, but don’t want to devote your time to a huge, complicated series. I wouldn’t call it “cozy” necessarily as the stakes are a little too high for that and it does get pretty intense at some points but absolutely has an HEA and is perfect for a fun read. It’s charming and lovely.
adventurous
lighthearted
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It began and ended exactly as the sort of book I love……but the middle was so muddled and I’m truly not sure who this book was ultimately for? better rtc, but mostly I’m disappointed in how it built itself and its romance
~*~
Okay, so. I loved the opening. I loved the sly little references here and there, I adore haunted woods (hi Uprooted, I miss you), and I looove foxes. Love love love sly foxes. Love royalty running around causing trouble, even if logically it didn't make a ton of sense for the about-to-be-crowned queen to be gallivanting with commoners in disguise the morning of her coronation, but it's fine. I could suspend my disbelief for what felt like My Fantasy. Plant magic, plant monsters, an obvious but potentially cute romance. all of it.
But then, spoilers, Fox the Fox became Fox the Human, which I didn't mind in any way because I love animal-to-human transformations (Hi 10th Kingdom, I love you), but then Fox started speaking in an almost slangy sort of way, and has a seriously vulgar tongue, and I started wondering who this book was actually for.
See, the way it's written feels like it's for a younger audience. But then Fox comes in with his sharp tongue, and I start to wonder. And then the horrors turned into some proper body horror and extreme violence toward the end that caught me off guard, and I wasn't really gelling with barbed wire and tornado sirens and all the other very modern things included in this very fantasy story that had such a nice grace to it when it began but lost it as soon as they entered the woods.
I'm heartbroken that it lost me so hard in the middle. It had me, I loved it, but then things moved too quickly (the theme of running away was handled so childishly I almost laughed out loud--you've known each other twenty minutes and you're doing the "Go home, I'll do this myself, you didn't help me when I needed you" speech), and many of the characters, especially once we finally found the not-very-hard-to-find impossible city, were seriously one note, and the magic just. Did whatever the magic wanted, and none of it made sense, and it all looked very pretty but ultimately meant nothing.
The main protagonists are cute, and the setting is absolutely lovely, and a lot of the snark and sass and dialogue and monsters are just wonderful, but the background stuff is just so messy and the pacing and interpersonal relationships so hasty, and the anachronistic stuff so off putting, and the magic so confusing, that it kind of balances out into general mediocrity.
I take back all my early recommendations, honestly. If you could read the first, I dunno, 15 chapters, and then make up your own story for the middle, and then pick it up for the last chapter (which does a time skip after the big dramatic moment without showing us what happened during the big dramatic moment, which I HATE), then you'll be good.
Write fanfic for this story, what a recommendation. But you'll like it more that way.
~*~
Okay, so. I loved the opening. I loved the sly little references here and there, I adore haunted woods (hi Uprooted, I miss you), and I looove foxes. Love love love sly foxes. Love royalty running around causing trouble, even if logically it didn't make a ton of sense for the about-to-be-crowned queen to be gallivanting with commoners in disguise the morning of her coronation, but it's fine. I could suspend my disbelief for what felt like My Fantasy. Plant magic, plant monsters, an obvious but potentially cute romance. all of it.
But then, spoilers, Fox the Fox became Fox the Human, which I didn't mind in any way because I love animal-to-human transformations (Hi 10th Kingdom, I love you), but then Fox started speaking in an almost slangy sort of way, and has a seriously vulgar tongue, and I started wondering who this book was actually for.
See, the way it's written feels like it's for a younger audience. But then Fox comes in with his sharp tongue, and I start to wonder. And then the horrors turned into some proper body horror and extreme violence toward the end that caught me off guard, and I wasn't really gelling with barbed wire and tornado sirens and all the other very modern things included in this very fantasy story that had such a nice grace to it when it began but lost it as soon as they entered the woods.
I'm heartbroken that it lost me so hard in the middle. It had me, I loved it, but then things moved too quickly (the theme of running away was handled so childishly I almost laughed out loud--you've known each other twenty minutes and you're doing the "Go home, I'll do this myself, you didn't help me when I needed you" speech), and many of the characters, especially once we finally found the not-very-hard-to-find impossible city, were seriously one note, and the magic just. Did whatever the magic wanted, and none of it made sense, and it all looked very pretty but ultimately meant nothing.
The main protagonists are cute, and the setting is absolutely lovely, and a lot of the snark and sass and dialogue and monsters are just wonderful, but the background stuff is just so messy and the pacing and interpersonal relationships so hasty, and the anachronistic stuff so off putting, and the magic so confusing, that it kind of balances out into general mediocrity.
I take back all my early recommendations, honestly. If you could read the first, I dunno, 15 chapters, and then make up your own story for the middle, and then pick it up for the last chapter (which does a time skip after the big dramatic moment without showing us what happened during the big dramatic moment, which I HATE), then you'll be good.
Write fanfic for this story, what a recommendation. But you'll like it more that way.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated