A review by thebooklovingpanda
The Swan Kingdom by Zoë Marriott

3.0

Well...I had my heart set on loving this, because I'd read another one of Marriott's novels ([b:Shadows on the Moon|9741685|Shadows on the Moon (The Moonlit Lands, #1)|Zoë Marriott|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1357574459s/9741685.jpg|14341418]) and it was fantastic...but with this one, it started really good, and I thought it was going to be fantastic, and her use of imagery and language is amazing, etc. etc. The suspense and dawning horror and the death of her mother, and the magic lore and stuff was all really good too. The characters were also really three-dimensional too, which was brilliant. I was hyperventilating when I realised this was the fairytale in which the girl's brother are like turned into swans and then she has to make T-shirts out of nettles and then people think she's a witch. Or something. Anyway.

It was all good, until the ending. It just felt rushed. I was reading it on my Kindle, and I was like at 91% through the book, and I remember thinking, No. No WAY this is so close to the end. NO WAYYY.

SpoilerThe surprising twist at the end involving Mairid could have been a seriously genius idea, which she could've expanded on far more than she did. I didn't really understand what Marriott was getting at and how Mairid became Zella, and
I just wish wish wish she could have written a better ending.