regalvee 's review for:

Where Shadows Bloom by Catherine Bakewell

4.0

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious medium-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: Yes

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As it's Pride Month I really wanted to choose a sapphic book to read this month and this has been on my radar a little while so I decided to jump right in. 

I've seen a few people saying that there is a bit of an insta love trope in this but it didn't feel that way to me, it just felt more like established love that hadn't been voiced and I quite liked that. 

Lope and Ofelia are very different characters, one being the girly princess and the other the heroic knight but I think they worked well together and I liked that the story was told from both of them. 

I think out of the two of them I did prefer Lopes chapters rather than Ofelia's. I'm not entirely sure why this is, maybe there was a little bit more action in these chapters and even though she is a knight she has a soft heart to her. 

I really enjoyed the story, it had good pace to it overall but I will say sometimes this was a little slow in places and the ending for me felt a little rushed but I did enjoy it. 

This book has a really stunning cover and the illustrator has perfectly captured how I pictured the characters. I am really glad I picked this up to read and I would definitely look at other books by this author.