Review of Ash Princess

 Note: This is a completely spoiler free review. There may be very minor spoilers, but you might have already gathered that by reading the book description and other reviews.


“THE QUEEN YOU WERE MEANT TO BE

THE LAND YOU WERE MEANT TO SAVE

THE THRONE YOU WERE MEANT TO CLAIM”

YA fantasy has become very repetitive and exhausting. It is all about a magical land being captured under some tyrannical king and a heroine who just happens to be the princess of that land. She wants to reclaim her throne and devises brilliant strategies that have been used in thousand other YA books. And, of course, there is a love triangle.

Please note that I am not classifying all YA fantasy books as bad. There are good books out there in this trope, and while Ash Princess isn’t the best, it isn’t that bad either.

Ever heard of “don’t judge the book by the cover.” Well, I don’t know about other readers, but I expect a good book to have a good cover. And since Ash Princess has a very beautiful cover, I expected it to be thrilling, nail-biting and filled with intrigue and mysteries. And while I wasn’t exactly disappointed, I didn’t feel the urge to pick it up from where I stopped. It wasn’t “unputdownable.”

I am not implying that Ash Princess is bad. I am sure that I would have loved it, if I had any interest in the YA trope. But since I don’t, this book felt flat.

However, there are parts in the book that I really liked. For instance, I loved that Laura Sebastian didn’t hesitate to craft this book a little on the darker side. Theo endures physical and mental abuse, and, in the beginning, she was realistically afraid of the Kaiser.

In many (bad) YA Fantasy books, I haven’t seen realism. The main character could go through a traumatizing event and still would be fearless and strong without any recovery. Yes, there would be a two-page crying session, but after that BAM! Suddenly, the main character is strong and defeats evil. Yay!

Not.

And, I will admit, Ash Princess isn’t a bad book. Yet, as I have mentioned before, YA isn’t really my trope, and there were some parts where I cringed (the love-triangle) but overall, it was a good read. Not a great read, but a good one nonetheless.

To sum up my entire review, I would give this book a 3.5 stars and would most definitely read the next book in this series.

My favorite part in the book: The prologue. I could feel Theo’s emotions through the page. And that’s supposed to be impossible since Theo doesn’t really exist. But Laura Sebastian brought me close to tears with that prologue.

“You are our people’s only hope Theodosia.”

And then, they cut her throat and they took my name.

Can I have tissues please? 

Buy Ash Princess here on Amazon. 

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