Silvara
Written on Aug 24, 2016
I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I really liked how the story started off in the modern world, but with Izzy's fascination for faerie tales and folklore. Their next door neighbor is an old woman who is said to be a witch, and knows even more about the Fae than Izzy does.
And then Hen is stolen away, and Izzy chases after her and falls down a rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland. Only she ends up in a faerie realm. You know immediately that the bottle she takes from Mariam is going to be important in the story. But the way it's actually used was a complete surprise to me!
I liked the scene where Izzy haggles for clothing, that was where I started to really like Dree. Selden annoyed me for a good bit of the book, but I ended up really liking him. He didn't annoy me for any bad reasons, just that he was a bit of a bratty older brother character, and so he picked on Izzy quite a bit. I also liked how close Izzy and Hen were. How you could tell how annoyed Izzy was by her little sister, but how much she loved her. And that the relationships between Izzy and the changelings grew over the course of their adventure.
There was a lot of interesting magic in the book. I saw the twist at the end about the Queen, but it was still well done. I wish this was a first in a series though, because there's so much more I want to know about the world. And what all the characters do next. Enough is wrapped up that it is a good place for an ending. But I still would love to see more.
If you like middle grade and fantasy, you need to read this book!
This review was originally posted on Fantasy of the Silver Dragon