Her Crown of Fire

Her Crown of Fire is a New Adult Fantasy Novel.

My Goodreads review can be found here.

I don't have an Amazon review because Amazon is starting to get finicky about having reviews from ARCs.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC for free from the publisher Write Plan. All thoughts about this book are my own.

As per usual, anything not directly on topic will be found in this color.

I read Haley Sulich’s book, Crimson Ash, last year; because of this, Ms. Sulich reached out to me to review the first two books published by her publishing/editing company WritePlan. Her Crown of Fire is the first book I’ll be reviewing and then next month I'll be reviewing the second one.

HCoF is interesting in that its strengths can also be its weakness. But first, let’s talk about what I liked.

I really like the friendship between the MC, Rose, and her friend, Tyson. The two of them are really friends and don’t try to force anything in between them. In this story, the two of them rely on each other at first. They genuinely care about one another and try to watch out for one another in this new world that they found themselves in. They have been friends for a long time in this story, and it allows for them to continue in this new world in a way that is believable. As the story continues, the two of them do tend to go their separate ways and have differing reactions to things in the story line but they never stop caring about one another. This is really nice, as it would have been easy to make them enemies by the end; instead of making anger something that is distracting from the plot, it is used as a normal reaction to life and the situation they found themselves in.

I also really liked how the response of Rose to arriving in Lotheria was a healthy balance of curiosity and skepticism about the world itself. She is willing to explore what is around her and goes with the flow to learn about this new world, but at the same time she keeps her eyes and brain open to what is really happening in Lotheria. This then allows for her to start keeping herself safe faster and also to start planning on how to get back to Earth (pretty sure she’s from the UK but if I remember correctly it's never specified). This balance also helps for the reader to learn about Lotheria in a natural way instead of being bombarded with information or not getting a feel of what is going on in Lotheria.

On that, there was a nice balance of “this place is awesome” and “this place sucks I want to go home.” A lot of these stories jump too far into one or the other. They either suspend disbelief for too long or stay stuck in their anger for an obnoxious amount of time (and that’s no fun to read). Ms. April does well in keeping the balance so that it is fun to read yet realistic at the same time.

Finally, I like the experience of learning the world with Rose and not learning it through lectures. It was a good way that I could connect to the story and learn about the culture and rules of Lotheria and not feel as though it’s being forced down my throat or lacking in depth, which would make for a boring read.

However, with all of this being said, there were some things that I didn’t connect with or felt could have been emphasized a little bit better. The first thing is that there is a time jump halfway through the story. It is not really told, so for about three chapter I was not enjoying what I was reading. Instead I was trying to piece together the timeline of what was actually going on. To this day, I am still not sure how long the time jump was. (If I missed it, please let me know. I was so confused for a while…)

By the end of the book, I still only had a general idea of what Lotheria was like, especially the geography and how the people interacted with one another. We did know about the relationship between the Academy and the people of Lotheria, but we didn’t learn anything about how the different people interact with one another. It felt somewhat restricted by the end of the story, due to how Rose tended to stay within her group/the story not going too far from Rose.

I'm not going to continue the series, but it is more about my upcoming schedule/tastes of books than the quality of the book. I did really enjoy reading this book though I'm probably not the target audience. If you like fantasy stories, I would suggest you read this one.


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In my next post, I'll be reviewing The Unadjusteds by Marisa Noelle, which is also published by WritePlan.