A review by tallangryplanet
A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross

adventurous mysterious relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book has all the ingredients for a great story: beautiful worldbuilding, an insteresting magic system, an engaging mystery. The isle of Cadence is an inviting place, full of hidden dangers for the unsuspecting traveller but also of gorgeous rewards for the ones who know to stay careful. However, its inhabitants have long been divided into two clans, and peace seems unattainable, until a hopeful young woman comes to power in the East. 

Ross has created an awesome world for this story. The island is not only populated by humans, but by the folk of the elements (fire, water, earth, and air), who, when happy, can help the humans by providing plentiful crops and reducing travel distances, or, if angered, take someone away for a hundred years. I was really intrigued by how the magic took so much effort for the people of the East to wield, and how they carefully cultivated good relationships with the spirits in order to ensure prosperity. The mystery also kept me hooked, I felt I needed to know what was really happening to the lost girls as if it had been my own sister that was taken, and I desperately wished for Adaira and Jack to succeed. 

However, some of the negative aspects far outweighed the positive ones. While I was absolutely on the protagonists' side, I couldn't get myself to actually care about them, and their relationship often felt forced or rushed despite there being some really cute moments. The only relationships I actually cared about, in fact, were a sister and her older brother (which was pretty refreshing to see in a book like this) and two of the side characters who had been married for years but only started communicating once tragedy struck them. In addition to this, despite all the things that happened, the book felt pretty slow, and the protagonists seemed unchanged by the end (yes, there were some changes, but it felt like they went back to square one right as the story ended). 

As far as the plot went, it kept me wanting to read more while at the same time being incredibly frustrated by the fact that the main characters seemed just a bit too oblivious. The "big reveal" about Jack was obvious once we learned a bit about the people living in Cadence, and yet he took half the book to connect the dots. Other twists were unexpected and well done but handled terribly by the characters, and one of these made the ending deeply unsatisfying for me. And yet, despite this, I'd love to read the second book, if only to find out more about the western side of the isle.

All in all, this was a good book. I might've given it 4 stars, were it not for the ending. If you like very atmospheric writing this is a book for you, otherwise you might find yourself struggling to get through it and just wishing to reach the end.