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ktbeth143 's review for:
A Wildflower in the Wind
by Megan Shade
3 ⭐️ // entertaining, but underdeveloped
Azaela, a young apothecary, wants nothing more than to find a magical cure to the illness that stole her mother from her—except that having magic without using it to serve the royal family is a death sentence. When her best friend’s magic is exposed in an act that saves her life, she’s forced from her village and into a life of servitude at the castle where she’s caught the attention of both fae princes (and that’s not a good thing). As she struggles to survive, she learns there are secrets her mother never told her about magic, about the royals, and about herself.
I give 3⭐️ to books I enjoyed but have critiques for. This book started out strong—so strong that when I hit the 20% mark where everything starts to get shaky, I asked myself ‘did editing just stop here?’
This story’s main problem is that there are too many things underdeveloped:
- the setting is a typical medieval-type fantasy land where the main weapons other than magic are swords and female characters wear dresses with petticoats and aprons while the men wear trousers and tunics—and yet in the spicy scenes it’s written that our MMC has to remove our FMC’s bra and underwear
- the FMC’s father is mentioned by herself and others to love his daughter deeply, but we never see him or get a good explanation for why he’s not around other than his job. On top of this, while he was mentioned as being there at her mother’s death, the rest of Azaela’s memories of childhood only feature her mother
- The Queen—the fae prince’s mother and the Dark King’s wife—is a pointless characters with no lines or impact on the story whatsoever. There’s no reason she should have ever been mentioned and it would have been better if the author had just killed her off in childbirth before the story ever began
- Evander’s preferred name—Gray—is never explained. And while we’re on the topic of Gray, his character is hot ‘n cold and not in a way that makes sense. When we first meet him, he’s all about duty and doesn’t seem to be the type who jokes around easily. But then all of a sudden he’s flirting with Azaela? And then he’s all “we can’t happen” but goes all touch-her-and-die to everyone. No wonder Azaela has trouble trusting him. He’s literally a different person on every page of the book—and a lot of his different traits are contradictory to each other which makes him a confusing character for readers.
- Eric has magic? Or does he? It’s hard to tell because really no one is supposed to, yet he teaches Azalea by personal experience. If he does have magic, why does he literally never use it? Never in combat, never to heal, etc.
- One thing that is clear but also isn’t—the king doesn’t kill off and siphon every person who develops magic, but he does to most people. So what’s the deciding factor? Why do some people in the realm get to keep their magic as long as they are using in service of the king’s army, but others are killed and he steals their magic for himself?
I’ve seen other readers complain about Azaela and her pension for never doing anything she’s told and always making everything worse—and I get it. I was a little annoyed by her at times. But to be honest, with the amount of people lying to her or not telling her things she really actually needed to know (and at the same time claiming to love her), I’m not shocked she comes across as a whiny, over dramatic damsel sometimes. The poor girl is literally having to try to make sense of everything with absolutely nobody’s help. You’d probably be whiny and frustrated with everything and everyone all the time too.
Honestly, the only thing keeping this story from being a 2⭐️ for me is that it was highly engaging. I read it on one day because I couldn’t put it down.
I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone though, and I haven’t decided yet if I’ll read the next one or not.