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amandainthelibrary 's review for:
The Crowns of Croswald
by D.E. Night
*Spoilers*
I received a copy of this book via Net Galley, and was asked for a review. Usually I don’t review many Middle Grade books, but I am always happy to find new recommendations for customers at my library. I started reading this with zero expectations. I didn’t read the books summary and didn’t read any reviews so I wouldn’t be biased starting out.
All of that being said, I did not like this book. Immediately I realized that the story was meant to be geared towards readers of Harry Potter, and hoped to be the second coming of magical fiction. The author tried so hard to write a book like Harry Potter without actually writing Harry Potter that it fell flat. The prologue tried to build a climax for what was to come but it was just confusing, especially when trying to capture the interest of a Middle Grade reader. It would have been better, in my opinion, if the Prologue was axed, and the book simply started with the first chapter.
We meet Ivy, an orphan working in a castle kitchen where she is verbally and physically abused by a character named Helga. Helga is written to be the equivalent to Harry Potter’s Vernon Dursley without any of his depth. Ivy eventually gets whisked away from her life in some sort of magic carriage and deposited in a less than interesting version of Diagon Alley. As we read more about Ivy she seems, at this point, to be a combination of Ron and Harry, with a splash of Hermione’s intelligence. Basically, she is poor, an orphan, always finds trouble, is highly intelligent, and has no clue how to handle magic.
There is no depth to Ivy. I didn’t feel like I got to know Ivy at all, and that I was just haphazardly following her throughout the book. With each new character introduced: The Selector, Rebecca, Fyn, and Damaris had even less depth than Ivy herself. The Selector remained a distant figure who appeared now and then to discipline Ivy only to fade into the background. It seemed like she was Dumbledore without any of his personality. There was Rebecca, a princess/scrivenist, started out trapped in a cage, then spent the rest of the book trying to figure out what she wanted to be. But again, no depth to her character. She was basically Ivy’s sidekick that constantly got left behind. Fyn just appears out of nowhere any time Ivy is thinking about him, or she’s about to do something dangerous. He comes off as more of an obsessed stalker with a handsome face. Ivy doesn’t even really question it and then develops a crush on him which is just weird. Lastly Damaris is cast as Ivy’s nemesis, and she is written as the female version of Malfoy without any substance.
The rest of the book just follows the plot of Harry Potter to the letter. There are ghosts, huge dining halls, a castle, professors, a secret, an evil villain, the villain’s followers, a final battle between the main character and the villain, and it all wraps up with the main character learning about their past. I finished this book disappointed and frustrated by its lack of originality. I really think this book has the potential to be better and could be if it didn’t try to so hard to be something it’s not.
I received a copy of this book via Net Galley, and was asked for a review. Usually I don’t review many Middle Grade books, but I am always happy to find new recommendations for customers at my library. I started reading this with zero expectations. I didn’t read the books summary and didn’t read any reviews so I wouldn’t be biased starting out.
All of that being said, I did not like this book. Immediately I realized that the story was meant to be geared towards readers of Harry Potter, and hoped to be the second coming of magical fiction. The author tried so hard to write a book like Harry Potter without actually writing Harry Potter that it fell flat. The prologue tried to build a climax for what was to come but it was just confusing, especially when trying to capture the interest of a Middle Grade reader. It would have been better, in my opinion, if the Prologue was axed, and the book simply started with the first chapter.
We meet Ivy, an orphan working in a castle kitchen where she is verbally and physically abused by a character named Helga. Helga is written to be the equivalent to Harry Potter’s Vernon Dursley without any of his depth. Ivy eventually gets whisked away from her life in some sort of magic carriage and deposited in a less than interesting version of Diagon Alley. As we read more about Ivy she seems, at this point, to be a combination of Ron and Harry, with a splash of Hermione’s intelligence. Basically, she is poor, an orphan, always finds trouble, is highly intelligent, and has no clue how to handle magic.
There is no depth to Ivy. I didn’t feel like I got to know Ivy at all, and that I was just haphazardly following her throughout the book. With each new character introduced: The Selector, Rebecca, Fyn, and Damaris had even less depth than Ivy herself. The Selector remained a distant figure who appeared now and then to discipline Ivy only to fade into the background. It seemed like she was Dumbledore without any of his personality. There was Rebecca, a princess/scrivenist, started out trapped in a cage, then spent the rest of the book trying to figure out what she wanted to be. But again, no depth to her character. She was basically Ivy’s sidekick that constantly got left behind. Fyn just appears out of nowhere any time Ivy is thinking about him, or she’s about to do something dangerous. He comes off as more of an obsessed stalker with a handsome face. Ivy doesn’t even really question it and then develops a crush on him which is just weird. Lastly Damaris is cast as Ivy’s nemesis, and she is written as the female version of Malfoy without any substance.
The rest of the book just follows the plot of Harry Potter to the letter. There are ghosts, huge dining halls, a castle, professors, a secret, an evil villain, the villain’s followers, a final battle between the main character and the villain, and it all wraps up with the main character learning about their past. I finished this book disappointed and frustrated by its lack of originality. I really think this book has the potential to be better and could be if it didn’t try to so hard to be something it’s not.