The Crowns of Croswald Review (Reviewer Copy)
Ivy Lovely has grown up sheltered from the truly magical in her considerably more mundane home for the first 16 years of her life. This changes, though, when she leaves home and crosses the invisible boundary. Right away, her powers awaken. She gets invited to study and practice her magical abilities at the Halls of Ivy, the best school to do this in. Ivy learns that the mundane life she was living before may not have been fun, but at least she was safe. While at school, she comes under threat of the Dark Queen who wants Ivy's powers and is willing to sacrifice Ivy's life to get them. Meanwhile, there is a secret at the Halls of Ivy, but Ivy is one of the only people who can remember that something is hidden at all. The problem- she can connect it to her past, but knows no solid information. She must uncover the secrets the school is hiding before they are gone forever and fight for her life all as a first year student.
Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Additionally, the author sent me this book as a free review copy; however, this did not influence my review. This is 100% my honest opinion. Let's begin:
If you read the description of the book and a book similar to Harry Potter popped in your head, you would be correct. It is very Harry Potter-esque. Now, this on one hand is very fun. The vast majority of people love Harry Potter and for very valid reasons. This book gave me a taste of what it felt like reading such a magical book again, so it definitely scores points for that. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel like there were a little too many similarities to Harry Potter to be coincidental. I was not gonna be upset by the overarching concept being similar because that happens with a lot of things and that's okay to me. In fact, I think it is fun seeing how an idea can be transformed into so many different things, so if anything, this made me more excited to read. Sadly, there were so many smaller similarities to Harry Potter that it started to feel a bit unoriginal. I began composing a list in a small notebook I have of things from this book that reminded me of Harry Potter, and the list quickly grew to longer than a page. I removed one star from my rating due to this matter. It just seemed to me that maybe the author took a little too much inspiration from the beloved series and this book was not entirely original because of it.
There were many things that were not seen in Harry Potter, though, and I enjoyed many of these new concepts or characters. For example, we did not get to see too much of the Dark Queen, but my favorite part of the book became my favorite because of her. I appreciated her presence without actually being there if that makes sense. The author did a good job of starting to build her up as the villain for the later books and made me interested in getting to see her story unfold. I also really liked the glanagerie bottles. When they were first introduced, they reminded me a tad bit of the mirror in Harry Potter that creates your worst fear so that you can practice getting rid of it or turning it into something less scary. However, I was very relieved when the author turned these into something entirely their own. They grew into a big part of the book and, since they were entertaining and unique, I did not mind that at all.
The other star came off because of the characters and world building. I think the world building could have been a bit stronger. I got a good understanding of how the world worked, but I had a hard time actually visualizing it. I love when I can watch the scenes in a book play out in my head like a movie and I could not really do that a lot with this book. The characters were hard for me to connect with and grow to really care about. I liked them, but I did not feel any sort of attachment to them. This took away from the book because scenes that were supposed to be high stakes and intense did not get there as much for me because I would not have been devastated if something happened to one of the characters.
The strongest part of the book, in my opinion, was the last two chapters. These were ones I really liked and blew through because I was genuinely interested in what was happening. That leads into the plot. The story of the book is intriguing and it did capture my interest. It was the execution of it, for me, that took away from it a bit. However, the idea and concept around it were very good.
One thing I loved about the book was the cover. It was really pretty to look at so I think it will definitely draw people in and I appreciated that it was meaningful. It actually depicts a type of magical creature that reappears in the book countless times. It always really bothers me when covers have absolutely nothing to do with the story, so I have to give props to this one for being relevant while still maintaining its visual appeal.
Overall, my thoughts kind of balanced out to be neutral on this book. I did not love it or hate it. I would say that if you want a taste of magic, it might be a good book for you to read. If you absolutely loved Harry Potter and want something very similar to it, but with some twists, I would give this book a go. Personally, this is something I would read if I wanted an easy read that I am okay with putting down a lot because I do not have much time to read at the moment. The idea was there, but the execution could have been done better, I think. Please do keep in mind, though, this is just my opinion and recommendations with this book, and you may very well have differing thoughts.
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