The Reading Obsession

For those who have loved Seraphina and Graceling comes another truly fabulous fantasy... For five centuries, a witch’s curse has bound the trolls to their city beneath the ruins of Forsaken Mountain. Time enough for their dark and nefarious magic to fade from human memory and into myth. But a prophesy has been spoken of a union with the power to set the trolls free, and when Cécile de Troyes is kidnapped and taken beneath the mountain, she learns there is far more to the myth of the trolls than she could have imagined. Cécile has only one thing on her mind after she is brought to Trollus: escape. Only the trolls are clever, fast, and inhumanly strong. She will have to bide her time, wait for the perfect opportunity. But something unexpected happens while she’s waiting – she begins to fall for the enigmatic troll prince to whom she has been bonded and married. She begins to make friends. And she begins to see that she may be the only hope for the half-bloods – part troll, part human creatures who are slaves to the full-blooded trolls. There is a rebellion brewing. And her prince, Tristan, the future king, is its secret leader. As Cécile becomes involved in the intricate political games of Trollus, she becomes more than a farmer’s daughter. She becomes a princess, the hope of a people, and a witch with magic powerful enough to change Trollus forever.

4.5 Stars Rounded Down

ARC received through Netgalley. This review is not biased in any way. There was no money, gifts, discounts, or favors exchanged for this review. 

First of all, look at the Goodreads average rating. 4.5 ish stars.  Whenever this happens, I'm immediately wary of what would probably make me the only person to not love the book. But this isn't the case, though. I actually loved this!

Now look at the cover. This is the part where I know I'm not going to like the book. It's a girl in a dress, which is basically all YA fantasy. And most YA fantasy isn't that likeable. Therefore, this is a book that I wouldn't love, right?

Wrong. Because what I failed to look at was the background, which is a cave, which is a setting in YA that's barely ever used. 

This book lacks several aspects that makes up the typical YA:

-Instantaneous love between the two protagonists the very second they ever see each other

-A plot disappearing the very second that there is a semblance of sense

-A boring main character

-Slut shaming

-A setting that's almost nonexistent

-A creepy hero that just knows that the main character loves him

-Other typical stuff

Cecile, as you can tell from the title, sings. And she's really good at it. She was even going to go sing at some opera place. But one day she was kidnapped and taken to Trollus, which, as you can tell by the name, has trolls. And she's their only hope. So of course she wins at everything!

Well, not quite. She's actually horrible at whatever she was supposed to do. Well, not horrible, but she doesn't win at everything. She just sorts of... doesn't succeeds? At all?

But hey, that's only the beginning! Yay!

Tristan's the troll prince that she was supposed to marry and save everyone with, and he's- wait. Did I forget to mention him? Yeah, I'm quite horrible at this, aren't I? Anyways, what I forgot to say was that Cecile was supposed to do this weird marriage thing with Tristan and save the world and stuff. Only it's not as unlikeable as my one sentence makes it seem. Just read the book. You'll understand what I'm talking about.

Alright, back to Tristan. He's actually why I didn't round this book up to five stars. I just didn't like him. At all. And there were all these reasons of why he acted the way he did (aka, being a horrible human being living thing to Cecile), but you see: I. Just. Don't. Care. Basically, he was the typical YA love interest, just with a reason. That reason- and this isn't a spoiler because it's in the actual summary so don't kill me because of this- is that he's a leader of a rebellion. And he's protecting her from being killed by acting horrible and all these bad reasons and such.

Unfortunately, since this is a young adult book, there is a love triangle. Kind of. But it doesn't take precedence over the plot, which is awesome.