rowantheeboat 's review for:

The Crowns of Croswald by D.E. Night

3.0

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I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this book. The challenge for any young adult fantasy novel is that they will all be compared to a small known series about a certain boy wizard. I went into this experience expecting a young adult fantasy novel and that’s what I got and made a conscious effort not to make that comparison, but it was really hard when there were some pretty blatant parallels. Magical teens who don’t know they are magical, discover they are more powerful than they thought, meet new friends, shop in a Diagon Alley type town, evil force no one knows much about who wants the hero dead, secret tutoring, etc. the list is pretty long and some of the chapter titles were reminiscent of that one boy wizard series.
I thoroughly enjoyed the efforts and care put to crafting this world and the feminist spin and I did ultimately enjoy myself and visiting this world. I would recommend the series for about fourth grade readers who have finished Harry Potter and want to get more, but at that point I would just recommend reading Harry Potter again. Has the same effect.