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jessthebookslover 's review for:
The Crowns of Croswald
by D.E. Night
Review of The Crowns of Croswald by D.E Night.
*This copy was sent to me in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 2/5 stars
If you’re looking for a book with *definitely* similar vibes to Harry Potter, then you could give this novel a chance, just… do not expect too much from it.
Plot:
For sixteen years Ivy Lovely has been hidden behind an enchanted boundary that separates the mundane from the magical. When Ivy crosses the border, her powers awaken. Curiosity leads her crashing through a series of adventures at the Halls of Ivy, a school where students learn to master their magical blood and the power of Croswald’s mysterious gems. When Ivy’s magic––and her life––is threatened by the Dark Queen, she scrambles to unearth her history and save Croswald before the truth is swept away forever.
____________________________________________________________________
I’ve gotta be honest: I may have started this book with way too high expectations and that’s 100% my fault. I got carried away by all these enthusiastic reviews referring to it almost as the next Harry Potter and well… Yes, they were partially right because….
1)this book is all about a girl, Ivy, who works as a servant at a castle and.. guess what…
2)she doesn’t know she has magic in her blood
3)she doesn’t have any money of her own…yet
4)she travels to this magical city in a very unique way
5)she has a school supplies list and will meet a very…distinctive man while shopping for all the items she needs
5)she’s later enrolled into this school of witchcraft and wizar… ops, sorry wrong book. As I was saying she is enrolled at Halls of Ivy, a school were scrivenists and royals can learn about their magic and much more (even about fantastic beasts *winkwink*),
BUT ALSO… nope nope nope nope.
In a very nice way: this book tried, tried really hard to be as much close to Harry Potter as possible, but failed big time in my opinion.
The narration feels jumpy, with lots of “it all passed in a blur” excuses and nothing is very much explained starting from the magical system, a fundamental part of any fantasy novel. We’re given facts like we’re supposed to know everything and everyone already, when in reality we know nothing, and moreover… nothing much happens. I was literally bored for at least 60% of the book, while the other 40% was kinda intriguing and captivating, but badly executed.
But let’s see what didn’t work for me in details now:
Writing Style:
Even if this is labelled as a middle grade, I had some troubles getting into Night’s writing style, as I said before, it’s rather jumpy, sometimes so much descriptive you feel suffocated by all the words and some other times so void of descriptions that you’re forced to stop reading and ask yourself “what the heck happened here? Did I miss some parts along the way?”. Most of the times I was just confused by the things happening. Not a big fan, not gonna lie. Positive note: dialogues were well constructed and felt real, although I also had some trouble with….
The Characters:
Ivy is a female version of Harry Potter, for all the things listed above and also for one more thing: she is so annoying. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like Harry either, never liked him as a character to be honest, and same goes for our dear Ivy the breaker of rules and champion at getting her life in danger and talking back to teachers. You’d think someone who spent their lives in servitude wouldn’t have such a quick talk back kinda attitude, but I guess I was wrong..?? She’s constantly telling others older than she is how rude they are and, I mean… one does not simply tell a person they’re being rude just like that, c’mon.
(yes, while writing that I was reminded of this meme. Never gets old)
The secondary characters are there, and there’s a lot of them too; some had some kind of relevance to the story… some others didn’t, and if I were to tell you about them and their personalities, I honestly wouldn’t be able to answer your questions ‘cause they had close to no depth and there weren’t many descriptions of them.
The villain of the story is another side of this book that absolutely didn’t work for me: the Dark Queen is supposedly the main villain of the story, she’s an evil woman () who wants all of the magic for herself (reminds you of someone??). Thing is… we truly see her ONCE and… we don’t know her. We don’t know her motives, what drives her, why she’s like that, nothing, we don’t even know how she got the *immense* powers she already has. It felt poor. It felt like there was no real enemy at all.
World Building:
I’ll say this again: the magic system is created out of thin air, no explainations are given (not until the very last chapter and even then they’re not even nearly enough to call it magical system), the world outside of the Halls is very… confusing, to say the least. Sometimes I would feel like many of the places where Ivy goes are INSIDE the Halls, when they’re actually outside and far away (see: jumpy plot and writing choices)! And I also wasn’t totally convinced by the descriptions of those places, because in an effort to make them magical, whimsical, and harry potter-ish in style, they just ended up being foggy and messy in my mind.
It’s now time for a little… Spill the tea! episode, open at your own risk.
Our main character Ivy meets this guy, Fyn. He’s a nice fella, but thing is, as I said before… They don’t share much plot together AND YET at the end they’re in love with each other.
To say it was “rushed” is an understatement here.
At the end, our boy Fyn “would know that lip bite anywhere” (I’m quoting here. This is from chapter 23, at about 89% into the book, and it was the first lip bite I had read about, and also… wasn’t this a middlegrade? The characters are said to be 17 years old at the end?? That would make the book a YA?? ) and he also knew Ivy’s favorite “aroma”, which had never been contemplated before, but anyway… Let’s go on, shall we.
As I was saying at the beginning of the review, nothing really happens. There’s a couple of action scenes, but they take up less than the 10% of the book. The rest is Ivy getting into trouble in the Halls, Ivy during classes, Ivy with Winsome, Ivy doing magic out of the blue and Ivy being clueless. I couldn’t help myself but feeling bored.
This is it for today! “Rant” over.
Aaaand we’re back! To finish this all off…
“Jess, are there positive aspects about this book?”
Kind of, yeah. As I wrote earlier, some scenes were exciting and intriguing and those alone kept me going, those very few scenes made me stick to reading this book, so if you’re not a pretentious reader, this book might be to your liking after all! Also, you might enjoy this series if you’re a beginner in fantasy or reading in general.
But as usual, I suggest you create your own experience and form your own opinion of a book.
(if you read until the end, here’s a virtual cookie for you *hands out cookies*)
Until next time…
*This copy was sent to me in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 2/5 stars
If you’re looking for a book with *definitely* similar vibes to Harry Potter, then you could give this novel a chance, just… do not expect too much from it.
Plot:
For sixteen years Ivy Lovely has been hidden behind an enchanted boundary that separates the mundane from the magical. When Ivy crosses the border, her powers awaken. Curiosity leads her crashing through a series of adventures at the Halls of Ivy, a school where students learn to master their magical blood and the power of Croswald’s mysterious gems. When Ivy’s magic––and her life––is threatened by the Dark Queen, she scrambles to unearth her history and save Croswald before the truth is swept away forever.
____________________________________________________________________
I’ve gotta be honest: I may have started this book with way too high expectations and that’s 100% my fault. I got carried away by all these enthusiastic reviews referring to it almost as the next Harry Potter and well… Yes, they were partially right because….
1)this book is all about a girl, Ivy, who works as a servant at a castle and.. guess what…
2)she doesn’t know she has magic in her blood
3)she doesn’t have any money of her own…yet
4)she travels to this magical city in a very unique way
5)she has a school supplies list and will meet a very…distinctive man while shopping for all the items she needs
5)she’s later enrolled into this school of witchcraft and wizar… ops, sorry wrong book. As I was saying she is enrolled at Halls of Ivy, a school were scrivenists and royals can learn about their magic and much more (even about fantastic beasts *winkwink*),
BUT ALSO… nope nope nope nope.
In a very nice way: this book tried, tried really hard to be as much close to Harry Potter as possible, but failed big time in my opinion.
The narration feels jumpy, with lots of “it all passed in a blur” excuses and nothing is very much explained starting from the magical system, a fundamental part of any fantasy novel. We’re given facts like we’re supposed to know everything and everyone already, when in reality we know nothing, and moreover… nothing much happens. I was literally bored for at least 60% of the book, while the other 40% was kinda intriguing and captivating, but badly executed.
But let’s see what didn’t work for me in details now:
Writing Style:
Even if this is labelled as a middle grade, I had some troubles getting into Night’s writing style, as I said before, it’s rather jumpy, sometimes so much descriptive you feel suffocated by all the words and some other times so void of descriptions that you’re forced to stop reading and ask yourself “what the heck happened here? Did I miss some parts along the way?”. Most of the times I was just confused by the things happening. Not a big fan, not gonna lie. Positive note: dialogues were well constructed and felt real, although I also had some trouble with….
The Characters:
Ivy is a female version of Harry Potter, for all the things listed above and also for one more thing: she is so annoying. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like Harry either, never liked him as a character to be honest, and same goes for our dear Ivy the breaker of rules and champion at getting her life in danger and talking back to teachers. You’d think someone who spent their lives in servitude wouldn’t have such a quick talk back kinda attitude, but I guess I was wrong..?? She’s constantly telling others older than she is how rude they are and, I mean… one does not simply tell a person they’re being rude just like that, c’mon.
(yes, while writing that I was reminded of this meme. Never gets old)
The secondary characters are there, and there’s a lot of them too; some had some kind of relevance to the story… some others didn’t, and if I were to tell you about them and their personalities, I honestly wouldn’t be able to answer your questions ‘cause they had close to no depth and there weren’t many descriptions of them.
The villain of the story is another side of this book that absolutely didn’t work for me: the Dark Queen is supposedly the main villain of the story, she’s an evil woman (
Spoiler
not really sure she’s a woman either, since we’re told in the last chapter that she isn’t humanSpoiler
at the end!!!World Building:
I’ll say this again: the magic system is created out of thin air, no explainations are given (not until the very last chapter and even then they’re not even nearly enough to call it magical system), the world outside of the Halls is very… confusing, to say the least. Sometimes I would feel like many of the places where Ivy goes are INSIDE the Halls, when they’re actually outside and far away (see: jumpy plot and writing choices)! And I also wasn’t totally convinced by the descriptions of those places, because in an effort to make them magical, whimsical, and harry potter-ish in style, they just ended up being foggy and messy in my mind.
It’s now time for a little… Spill the tea! episode, open at your own risk.
Spoiler
Welcome back guys. Today I want to talk about insta-love, LITERAL insta-love. We’re faced with a powerful case here, because we’re talking about characters that have seen each other twice, maybe three times during the whole lenght of the novel.Our main character Ivy meets this guy, Fyn. He’s a nice fella, but thing is, as I said before… They don’t share much plot together AND YET at the end they’re in love with each other.
To say it was “rushed” is an understatement here.
At the end, our boy Fyn “would know that lip bite anywhere” (I’m quoting here. This is from chapter 23, at about 89% into the book, and it was the first lip bite I had read about, and also… wasn’t this a middlegrade? The characters are said to be 17 years old at the end?? That would make the book a YA?? ) and he also knew Ivy’s favorite “aroma”, which had never been contemplated before, but anyway… Let’s go on, shall we.
As I was saying at the beginning of the review, nothing really happens. There’s a couple of action scenes, but they take up less than the 10% of the book. The rest is Ivy getting into trouble in the Halls, Ivy during classes, Ivy with Winsome, Ivy doing magic out of the blue and Ivy being clueless. I couldn’t help myself but feeling bored.
This is it for today! “Rant” over.
Aaaand we’re back! To finish this all off…
“Jess, are there positive aspects about this book?”
Kind of, yeah. As I wrote earlier, some scenes were exciting and intriguing and those alone kept me going, those very few scenes made me stick to reading this book, so if you’re not a pretentious reader, this book might be to your liking after all! Also, you might enjoy this series if you’re a beginner in fantasy or reading in general.
But as usual, I suggest you create your own experience and form your own opinion of a book.
(if you read until the end, here’s a virtual cookie for you *hands out cookies*)
Until next time…