Reviews

Empress & Aniya by Candice Carty-Williams

Only show reviews with written explanations

rhinnyroo02's review

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adventurous funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

annettebooksofhopeanddreams's review against another edition

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4.0

This book has been on my wishlist for a long time already, but I always found the price a little bit too high for the amount of pages the book counts. This week I found a copy in a bargain store though and when the copy arrived today I knew what my afternoon read was gonna be. I wasn't prepared to find such an important story inside!

The basics of this story are actually pretty simple. Empress is a scholarship student attending a private school. Aniya has grown up in a big house with endless money. Forced by one of their teachers they spend a lot of time together and quite quickly they become friends, despite all their differences and their entirely different upbringing.

What I like about this book is that this shows that being unhappy doesn't have much to do with money. Aniya is growing up in a big, but cold, house with loads of pressure on her shoulders. Empress doesn't only miss out on material things, but also on emotional things. She gets no support and no love from her mother.

During the story the girls are forced to be in each other's shoes. And I like how the author shows that both girls have to deal with their own issues. They might be different issues, but they both don't have that perfect life. And their friendship and the way they're willing to fight for each other is so pure and really warms your heart while reading the book!

belbookandacuppa's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

haddy's review against another edition

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emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Nice quick easy listen, lovely story about female friendship

Only issues were not sure how changing bodies affected the storyline at all, and bit sly of the dad to say they were gonna adopt Empress and then just didn’t🥲

Content Warnings

alice_maeve's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

jodi_ice's review against another edition

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3.0

Cawpile: 3.5* 6.64

*Spoiler alert incase the app tab doesn’t work*

I really wanted to like this. From the blurb it sounded like a fresh kind of take on freaky Friday.
However. All the swap really did was make the two of them spend time together that they probably would have done, or would have done in time anyway with their growing friendship.

The blurb paints the two as ‘not exactly best friends’ and while this may be true it’s not for the sake of personality, it’s more that they hardly know each other. To be honest how deep their friendship actually is for how long they have known each other is quite surprising. I mean the first time they meet Aniya isn’t exactly kind to Empress, yet within days she is running round doing whatever she can for her new friend. The turnaround in attitude towards Empress is very quick and their friendship quickly grows.
They are staying over at Aniya’s house on their shared birthday when they perform the spell that causes the swap, just the two of them, not like a mass sleepover, does that sound like something two 15 year old girls who didn’t like each other would do?

No, this swap certainly highlighted the differences that Empress had been hiding from Aniya but it wasn’t anything like it could have potentially been had the two girls not already known a lot about each other and been with each other for the whole swap.

Also- the ending. Now, I’m sorry, but maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know anyone who would leave a baby with a woman who had left said baby *alone* in the flat mere hours earlier. And if reporting that to social services meant that sadly Empress also had to go into the system and couldn’t immediately be placed with them, then it’s sad but it’s what happens. It’s more responsible than leaving a baby with a verbally and physically abusive and irresponsible parent who abandoned their baby in a flat, and when the baby wasn’t alone it was left with her other minor child…The fact it ended well was probably more dumb luck than anything else.

So I’m sorry but it was a miss for me. I know I’m not the target for it, but I do read a lot in many age brackets so I don’t think my age has influenced this review.