The Girl with the Whispering Shadows Review (Reviewer Copy)
Ivy learning that she fulfills the Moonsday promises puts her in even more danger. She is forced to leave the Halls and go to Belzebuthe, a secret town that is only accessible by magical people who know the town's name. While there, she is charged with finding the second piece of the Kindred Stone. Even though the town is supposed to be the safest place for her, a dark presence still haunts her. Ivy must use her magic to the best of her ability to protect herself from the Dark Queen and her forces while she works to put the Kindred Stone back together and go back to the Halls of Ivy.
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:
This book is much improved from the first novel (not that the first was bad- I gave it 3 stars). I had 3 main criticisms of the first book in the series, and this book fixed two of them. I could not help but relate the first to Harry Potter because so many things seemed like they were taken from Harry Potter and then spun around a tad bit. I just didn't feel the originality of the first book because of this. I believe the author really came into her own with this installment. I loved all of the new magic that was introduced and how the author was very creative with some of the stuff she came up with. I did not have a list of things that were very similar to Harry Potter this time; in fact, I could probably only think of 2 things and that's if I'm stretching to do so. This book truly did build it's own, unique magical universe.
The world-building also improved greatly. I feel like there is still a little bit of room for improvement, but I could imagine everything playing out in my head pretty clearly unlike the first time. I especially liked how Belzebuthe was introduced and built. Descriptions could have been a bit stronger as well, but like I said for the world-building, it was not too extreme. I only had a hard time picturing some of the magical creatures at times, but this often as fixed later on in the book. I just wish that I could picture them when they are first introduced instead of imagining them wrong for a while.
I took one star off because the characters only minimally improved. For starters, Ivy is supposed to be 16 and Fyn around 18 or 19 I believe, but they do not act their age. The majority of the characters that are kids (and I am including people Fyn's age here) act and speak as if younger than they are. I felt a bit closer to the characters than the first book, but still not really attached which sort of took away from some of the higher stakes scenes.
I was definitely more invested in this book than the first. In the first, I only really got invested in the last 2 chapters, but I'd say the entire later half and somewhat before of this book were good and kept me interested. The first half was not bad, it was just a bit slower because it was setting everything up. In other words, it was a different kind of interesting. I enjoyed the plot of this book in general more than the first as well.
I said this for the first book and I'll say it again for this one- I really like the cover. It's very pretty, but also relevant to the novel. So once again, I give props for the cover being meaningful while not losing its visual appeal. The cover designer did a great job with this series so far!
Overall, I liked this book much better than the first one. It still has a couple of issues that I am hoping will get resolved in the third book. However, it is definitely still a good read that I would recommend to middle grade readers who are fans of books like Harry Potter that have really cool magical universes. The author came into her own and I think that is where much of the improvement came from.
Thank you for letting me read this book through NetGalley in exchange for this honest review!
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