A Curse so Dark and Lonely Review

    The crown prince of Emberfall, Prince Rhen, was cursed by an enchantress to repeat the autumn of the year he turned eighteen. The only way for him to break the curse is for a girl to fall in love with him, but who can fall in love with a man who turns into a beast that destroys and kills? Harper has had a hard life with her now absentee father racking up debts she and her brother now have to pay and her mother dying, not to mention people thinking her weak because of her cerebral palsy. After she tries to save a girl on the street, she gets taken to the magical world of Emberfall. Harper knows nothing of this world, but she slowly learns about everything that now rides on her shoulders. Rhen quickly learns that Harper is not your average girl and begins to hope once more. Unfortunately, as new threats to the kingdom come to life, Harper and Rhen have much more than just the curse to worry about.

    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. Let's begin:

    I read this book as a buddy read with one of my friends on Bookstagram, and that was honestly the only thing that stopped me from devouring this in a single day. This book was amazing in so many different ways, and I get so excited talking about it that I struggle for words, so let's see how I do here.

    I loved the characters so much, but Grey especially has my heart. All of them were developed very well and I grew to care about them a lot. The relationships they all had with each other and how their relationships changed throughout the book were so interesting.  I enjoyed that this was a slow burn book and not instant love. It was fun to watch how Rhen and Harper's relationship shifted and changed into them genuinely caring about each other. Harper is such a strong person and is a really great role model for anyone who reads this. I love all of the connections between Rhen and the beast from Beauty and the Beast (the story this is based off of). I think the author did a great job of tying in little aspects of it here and there but did an especially great job with Rhen. I have no words for Grey. Just read the book and you'll see what I mean- he's fantastic. Lilith was a character that I really quickly grew to love to hate.

   The storyline is great. I loved all of the twists and turns and I honestly did not expect a lot of things that happened even with it being a retelling. I think Lilith was one of the major reasons this happened. She is based off of the enchantress, but unlike the original enchantress, she sticks around and creates a lot of scenes that are difficult to read but add a lot to the book. Grey also causes a lot of this. The plot had really nice pacing and was entertaining even during the slower parts.

    The world-building and descriptions were excellent. I could easily visualize what the world, especially the castle, looked like. The castle was so magical and haunting. Everything played out like a movie in my had because the descriptions were written so well. I think having DC in the novel was a nice twist on the tale. 

    Also, can we just talk about the cover for a minute? It's so pretty! I love the design and the color. It makes my bookshelves look much prettier and, if I hadn't already known I wanted to read the book because of hearing about what it was about, I probably would have bought it based on the cover alone.

     Overall, I absolutely loved this book! Quite honestly, you could pretty much name any aspect of a book and I will say it was done excellently here. This was my introduction to Brigid Kemmerer and I will definitely be looking into more of her books because of this one. I would very highly recommend giving this a try (and if you have someone to buddy read it with, do it! It makes it so fun and this is one of those books you have a lot of emotions to spill about)! I'm also super happy that book 3 is coming out soon because I'm sure I am going to love the second book and want the third right away (yes, I am very confident about the second book being amazing).

Rating: 5/5 stars

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

# of Pages: 484

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Retelling, Romance

Series: Cursebreakers (Book 1) 

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