A review by thebooknerdscorner
The Lost Queen by Aimee Phan

2.0

A young girl learns to grapple with the mysterious visions and powers she is gradually acquiring while also trying to fit in at her prestigious high school in this urban fantasy inspired by Vietnamese mythology. 

Jolie Lam is known as the class weirdo. Between her psychic grandfather and her psychotic break at a swim meet last year, no one wants anything to do with Jolie. That is, until she saves Huong Pham, one of the school's most popular girls, and Jolie's entire world begins to change. As Jolie and Huong's bond deepens, the two girls learn that their connection goes back generations and that there is more to their powers than first meets the eye. The girls begin to experiment with their powers in the hopes of determining just who they really are and just what it means to be a Lost Queen of ancient Vietnam. 

For a while, I was seeing this book around literally everywhere. I usually love books based in Asian mythology, so I was stoked to learn that I was accepted for a book tour for "The Lost Queen." Unfortunately, this book seriously made me consider DNFing it, and that is quite the feat for me. I ended up sticking it out and it ended up going somewhere, but I didn't enjoy the ending enough to redeem this book. 

The first hundred or so pages of this book were so confusing, jarring, and jumped around so much that I had a hard time following what was happening. I didn't care about literally anything in the book until almost page two hundred, and the main plot line doesn't start rolling until about halfway through this book. The pacing in this one is weird, I didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters, and the writing didn't do anything special for me. 

This book was a super odd read because it was super confusing but also extremely predictable. In my opinion, the title and cover alone revealed too much and took away most of the wow factor that this book could have had. I don't even read the book flap summary before I start reading, and I still knew most of what happened in this book before I even opened the book. 

I was expecting this book to be higher fantasy, so discovering that it was an urban fantasy was a bit of a letdown for me. This one is a little on me, but the cover just makes it seem so magical, and it wasn't nearly as fantastical as I wanted it to be. 

I don't want to ramble about my dislike for this book anymore, so I'll cut it here. I hope that this one manages to reach that people that will enjoy it, but I found this one to be very disappointing. 

Overall, "The Lost Queen" was a bit of a letdown for me. The beginning was confusing, the plot was predictable, and I couldn't bring myself to like any of the characters. I have no interest in pursuing the second book in this series and will try to put this disappointing read out of my mind as soon as possible.