The Crowns of Croswald by D.E. Night | Review

Title: The Crowns of Croswald
Author: D.E. Night
Pages: 314
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Goodreads Rating: 4.06 stars
Published: July 21st, 2017
Source: paperback/from author

Description:

In Croswald, the only thing more powerful than dark magic is one secret… 

For sixteen years Ivy Lovely has been hidden behind an enchanted boundary that separates the mundane from the magical. When Ivy crosses the border, her powers awaken. Curiosity leads her crashing through a series of adventures at the Halls of Ivy, a school where students learn to master their magical blood and the power of Croswald’s mysterious gems. When Ivy’s magic––and her life––is threatened by the Dark Queen, she scrambles to unearth her history and save Croswald before the truth is swept away forever.


My Thoughts:

I went into reading this thinking it would be similar to Harry Potter, and on the surface the summary really is: young, nonmagical girl discovers she is magical and goes to a school for magical young people.  But that's where the similarities end.  And while I love Harry Potter, this story holds a place in my heart for a whole other reason.

I love young Ivy.  She is so uncertain in the beginning and just cannot believe she is a scrivner - she has magic!  Something she wished for since she was a young scaldrony maid, stoking the dragons who made the food in the House of Plum.  She spent her small amount of free time drawing memories of dreams or reading the books her dwarf friend Rimbrick brought her.  When she suddenly found herself without a home and with a kitchen dragon on her own, she barely has time to think before she's whisked away to her magical future at the Halls of Ivy.

The Crowns of Croswald was a fun ride!  While I'd originally been expecting one kind of magical story, I was transported to a world of a completely different kind of magic!  Like a cross between a bit of Harry Potter and a whole lot of Eyes Like Stars, The Crowns of Croswald is a world all its own with magical creatures, potions, spells and characters with special powers!

*disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review*

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Title: Fracture
Author: Megan Miranda
Pages: 262
Publisher: Walker Childrens
My rating: 3.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.82 stars
Published: January 17, 2012

Description:

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

While this was a really good book {and a quick read at less than 300 pages}, I'm not a big contemporary fiction reader.  And, while this had the elements of a fantasy {a brain injury that make it so the heroine can sense when people are dying}, everything else was contemporary.  Also, it was a bit more MG than YA, and I think that might have been a drawback for me.  That being said, yes I did enjoy this book.

Megan Miranda made the character of Delaney very "girl next door".  She is the kind of girl I would have liked to read about when I was 15 or 16.  She has a boy who's her best friend {who she wishes was more, but is slightly confused about that}, and my inner teenager was saying "ugh, I know what you mean!  I've been there!"  She's so incredibly average, other than her ability to sense death, but that makes her so incredibly likeable as well.  She's not skinny, gorgeous, popular {only some, and by association}.  She's brainy {lost out to a friend for the honor of class valedictorian purely because she was in a coma and missed just enough school to put her a little behind}.  She refers to her hair as her "one good feature", and is thrilled that they didn't have to shave it off because of her injury {so typical teenager}.  Everything makes her so relate-able, which I think is a good thing for younger readers.

I like how the Megan Miranda had everything unfold between Delaney and her best friend, Decker.  It wasn't "oh, so happy, we love each other!"  There were fights, periods of silence, glares, disapprovals... everything that you would see in a real relationship for teenagers.  Decker was pretty well written coming from a woman's POV.  You could see all the things that would bother a girl who secretly liked him, but at the same time see why he would think and act the way he does.  And he really does grow on you more and more.

Enter Troy.  Why is it there always seems to be some kind of love triangle in books?  Is it really just not that interesting to see the guy chase the girl or vice versa?  {Okay, okay, stop yelling "NO" at me!}  Troy was very interesting, and a little... odd.  I really want to say more about his character, but I feel like in doing so I would be giving too much of the story away.  But it is interesting to see how he helps Delaney and what exactly she learns from him.

To sum up, this is a great quick read, but its even better for younger people {14-17-ish range}.  You have a youngster that loves to read {guy or girl}?  I would recommend this.