Title: The Glass Queen

Author: Gena Showalter

Pub. Date: September 29, 2020

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Pitied.

Sickly.

Unfit to rule.

Princess Ashleigh Charmaine is known as the Glass Princess, fragile enough to shatter with a whisper of wind. Born with a weak heart, she dreams of being treated like anyone else. Unlike her headstrong sisters, she received no magical ability at birth and lives every day expecting to die. Until an oracle announces that Ashleigh is fated to play the part of Cinderella, wed a handsome royal and save the Kingdom of Sevon from the evil king and queen who once ruled the land.

As war rages, Ashleigh begins to doubt her role in the fairy-tale prophecy. Animals despise her, she can’t carry a merry tune and she has zero social graces. Worse, the king she’s supposed to enchant is the newly crowned sovereign of the winged warriors known as the Avian…and he despises her, too.

When Ashleigh develops a terrifying magical ability to commune with dragons and create fire from air—a power she cannot control—she must work with King Saxon to save their kingdoms and their lives. By the stroke of midnight, she must warm his icy heart…or forever break her own. Will Ashleigh ever become the queen she’s prophesied to be…or will she lose everything she’s come to love?

This will be a mini spoiler free review. Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited to read this. I’m always a fan of fresh takes on fairytales, and this book delivers on that front.

Unfortunately, this book was seriously lacking in other regards. I struggled through the second half of this book. I loved the first 50% – the tension, the angst, the enemies to lovers and all the drama…plus the tournament aspect – I was totally here for it. I really liked Ashleigh and Saxon’s relationship in the first half. The “I can’t like this person, because I *hate* them” tension is one of my favorite tropes/plot points and it’s always fun to read. I ate up the tension and angst between the two of them.

Then…I don’t know what happened in the second half of this book. Between Ashleigh’s weird character flip, the awkward AF sex scenes/sexy scenes (some of the phrasing was ew) and just my general lack of suddenly not being invested, I was bored.

So bored.

I really couldn’t get past the awkward smut scenes and the weird as hell phrasing. I didn’t understand how Ashleigh’s character went from sheltered and naïve, to stereotypical stupid dumb blonde. It honestly felt like the second half of this book could have been written by someone else.

I don’t know, I just expected more, I guess. I honestly don’t know how to explain “I was bored” in more words than that. I was bored and I didn’t really care. I’m disappointed that it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. I don’t think it’s a bad book, and I did like the fresh take it took on the “The Little Cinder Girl” fairytale. I liked the appearance of characters from the first book. Despite this book not being my favorite, I will be reading the next one. I’m invested in the world that the author has created and I’m really curious to see how she alters the next fairytale. Something big is coming to the land of Enchantia and I want to know what it is. The Glass Queen comes out September 29, so you still have time to catch up with The Evil Queen!