Title: The Fate of Crowns

Author: Rebecca L. Garcia

Pub. Date: January 5, 2021

Pages: 246

Pub: Amazon

Genre: YA Fantasy

Rating: ⭐️⭐️

The Fate of Crowns is a world filled with fae and sorcerers where a lie can unravel them all.

With my brother’s death came the crown and all the trappings that accompany it. Now, my father–the most dangerous man in Magaelor–seeks to control my future.

But fate has other plans.

Thrown into mer-filled waters, I’m dragged into the rival kingdom of Berovia. Surrounded by those who murdered my brother and wished my entire family dead, I must find my way back to my kingdom. There, a marriage between myself and the dark fae prince could bring peace to a century’s old division between the fae and sorcerers.
But dark revelations and deadly lies threaten to destroy my destiny. I must make the choice between my duty, family, and heart before it’s too late.
​
Will I allow myself to become the exalted Queen of everything? Or be reduced to a cautionary tale as the shattered princess of nothing?

The Fate of Crowns is a young adult fantasy, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Holly Black.

This will be a spoiler free review. Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free copy to read and review. Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t it for me.

Based on the cover and the synopsis I thought I was going to love this book. It sounded exactly what I’ve been reading, and I was ready to fall in love with a new fantasy world and new characters.

That didn’t happen. I was confused almost the whole book. I kept waiting for it to all make sense. Not sure if I wanted to continue, I went to Goodreads and read a few reviews and they were glowing, all praising the book and the character development the main character goes through. So, I had hopes. Mild hopes.

And oh how I was misled. 

I didn’t care for Winter and found her to be indecisive and whiny the whole time. Never once does she definitively make up her mind about something. She spends the whole book bouncing around, proclaiming her brilliance, how smart she was, but she doesn’t do anything. If someone didn’t agree with her, it was a personal slight, and she’d legit run away in tears, bemoaning about how everyone was against her. She doesn’t even sit in a morally grey area, she’s just “I’m right, you’re wrong, I know best”. I also couldn’t get over the fact that she starts as a 15-year-old, turns 16 (in a blink of an eye) but her whole character felt older. It felt like the author had initially made her older, but then changed her age to fit a bracket. But didn’t actually age down the character.

As for the pacing. It was everywhere. Things happened so quickly, so often and jumped around that I struggled to follow what was happening. The whole start of the book was going at light-speed and I was utterly lost. I didn’t understand the stakes, the emotional weights were off, and I kept having to turn back to see if I’d accidentally skipped a paragraph or something.

I thought I was going to get this book where the princess had been stolen away and shown how the real world was not under the rose-colored glasses her father had painted it. Instead Winter spends all of a handful of weeks (but really just felt like a few days since she spent so much time sleeping) “learning the truth” and is completely against the idea that her father might not be a good guy. There are also three love interests…and they were all more interesting than Winter.

The main one being Blaise. He had the suaveness of Rhys (if we’re comparing) and the lackadaisical care of Carden. Like, legit if you mashed those two together, you’d have Blaise. And while he was more interesting than Winter, the fact that he was so blatantly supposed to be a mix of Rhys and Cardan kind of made me not interested. Blaise was clearly supposed to be the dark, fae prince who was morally grey but he just didn’t hit that mark for me. I liked Cedric – the second love interest had the personality of a Golden Retriever, who *maybe* had a slightly dark backstory. And I’m not even going to bring up the first one, because it was weird af, and he was clearly older than Winter’s 15 and it was just so strange. Also, a reason I think Winter was initially older and then aged down.

I think if the author had kept her older, let’s say, 18 – the book would have been more believable. Winter’s whole persona of “I know shit, I’m strong” would have made so much more sense. Hands down.

This book also had so much going on. Mythical beings across the board, and I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the rules of the world. I didn’t get why light fae and dark fae hated each other. I didn’t understand the tension with the Elves, or the differences between the sorcerers of Winter’s world and the ones of Cedric’s. I also have no idea where the differentiator of “lunas” and “solis’s” came from. That felt like it came out of left field.

I feel like I read a different book form everyone else who has reviewed this on Goodreads. I wanted so badly to like this, to love this. The cover is stunning, and the synopsis paints this amazing story. So, I’m bummed it didn’t enjoy this as much as I had anticipated enjoying it. As always, I encourage you to read and form your own opinions on books, but I’m not going to recommend picking this one up.