Name: Edgewood
Author: Kristen Ciccarelli
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Date published: March 2022
Genre: Fiction, young adult, fantasy, romance
Pages: 400
Rating: 2/5
No matter how far she runs, the forest of Edgewood always comes for Emeline Lark. The scent of damp earth curls into her nose when she sings and moss creeps across the stage. It’s as if the woods of her childhood, shrouded in folklore and tall tales, are trying to reclaim her. But Emeline has no patience for silly superstitions.
When her grandfather disappears, leaving only a mysterious orb in his wake, the stories Emeline has always scoffed at suddenly seem less foolish. She enters the forest she has spent years trying to escape, only to have Hawthorne Fell, a handsome and brooding tithe collector, try to dissuade her from searching.
Refusing to be deterred, Emeline finds herself drawn to the court of the fabled Wood King himself. She makes a deal - her voice for her grandfather’s freedom. Little does she know, she’s stumbled into the middle of a curse much bigger than herself, one that threatens the existence of this eerie world she’s trapped in, along with the devastating boy who feels so familiar.
With the help of Hawthorne - an enemy turned reluctant ally who she grows closer to each day - Emeline sets out to not only save her grandfather’s life, but to right past wrongs, and in the process, discover her true voice.
- From Goodreads.
During the first few chapters of Edgewood, I felt unsure about the story and how it would go, I did not quite understand Emeline at first because despite growing up in a mystical place and having mystical things happen around her all her life, she continued to deny anything magical could be happening, and I struggled to connect with the story at the beginning because of that. Although I began to enjoy the story a little more once it moved into the forest and the Wood King's court, it was still frustrating that Emeline did not seem to understand the seriousness of the situation and how it had changed everything. There were a few moments where she felt more naïve or behaved more foolishly than seemed realistic for a character with her knowledge and experience. While there were moments I did like her and empathised with her, unfortunately I found it quite difficult to root for Emeline as the story went on. I could not quite understand her priorities and why answers to problems did not occur to her, or why at times, even though she seemed to care for her friends and the forest they lived in, she never seemed to be that focused on helping and saving them.
As the story did go further on and was more about the time in the forest and the time with the Wood King's court, the were more elements about it that I enjoyed. The sense of adventure, the different fairy tale and myth inspirations, and creative setting really made me intrigued to know more about the magical world and the creatures living there.
However, the plot felt a little repetitive at times, although there were mysteries I was interested in seeing the answers to, it did feel like we kept going through the same problems over and over again without getting any closer to the solutions, so it did feel frustrating to read, even though I was excited to get to the end to find out how everything resolved. I also did not like the answers we got for some of the mysteries, I felt they did not completely make sense with the information we had already been told and I felt some of the backstories they filled in did not make sense for the characters we knew either, creating storylines for those characters that I felt were inconsistent. Some of the answers to the mysteries I think I would have liked more if they had been revealed in a different way and we got the story told differently, but some of the answers to the mysteries I really did just not like at all, and some of them made it hard for me to continue to root for characters I had previously liked.
I am still unsure how I felt about the ending, because some parts of it were quite satisfying and wrapped up some of the storylines in a way that I liked and had been hoping for, but in other ways I was still left feeling not quite content and it did not really have everything I wanted after all that the characters had been through.
There was so much potential in this book. The magical world was so fascinating and I really wanted to get immersed into it, but we did not explore it as much as I would have liked. There were quite a few characters I did like and that I always enjoyed seeing more of, mainly some of the side characters, but I struggled to connect to the main character, although sometimes I did really feel her emotional struggles. While I liked the romance between the main character and her love interest, there was not quite enough time with them together for me to get truly invested, and a couple of moments that they did have together fell flat for me. The plot left me feeling disappointed as I thought it could have gone in some really exciting directions, but I ended up feeling a bit lost with where it did go. Overall it could have been a really great book for me and I could see why someone else might enjoy it, but ultimately I struggled with it too much to rate it highly and was left feeling conflicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment