The first thing that attracted me towards this book was its cover. It is definitely beautiful. But I wish the books was as good as the cover. This is a retelling of the Snow Queen. I personally love retellings but this one was poorly executed. The writing was something which was not good and thus it leave me in foul mood.

The main character, the Snow Queen was definitely entertaining. Sometimes she is cold-hearted, sometimes she is cool. Thyra was also a pretty amazing character. However, Kai, the love interest, was a predictable character and a bit boring? He was nice and all that but there was nothing special about him which would have made me like him.

The plot had much potential but the world-building is quite weak. There were some nice twists and turns but overall, the author executed the whole thing poorly which doesn't have the capacity to hold the reader for long enough.

I tried reading this when I first got it but within the first chapter I just knew the writing style wasnt for me. That doesnt mean it wont work for someone else. Its probably just a personal preference thing.

I really tried my best to get into this, but this was just... not for me, at all. The beginning was slow and slightly confusing and I just don't think I would ever pick this up again. I am not interested in writing a full review.

This is a retelling of the Snow Queen, one of my favourite fairytales, and I really liked this book. I liked the Snow Queen herself, how she was cold and ruthless and suppressing any hint of her good side because that is what she thinks she needs to do to survive. Thyra was a great character and I rooted for her all the way through the book, despite her doing some morally dubious things. I liked how the plot changed from the original story with Kai and Gerda knowing Thyra beforehand and then getting to know her after becoming the Snow Queen. I loved how the mirror got fixed in the end, it wasn't what I was expecting at all. The magic system and the worldbuilding was interesting.

The only thing I didn't like was the romance. I found it came out of nowhere, Kai and Thyra seemed to be heading towards grudging friends more than anything. I thought it was unnecessary, considering the end, and the story could have worked just as well if Kai and Thyra's relationship had stayed platonic and Kai had been Thyra's first friend.

I have read many YA fantasy fiction and I will say this was not my most favourite novel of this genre. Besides Frozen, I'm pretty unfamiliar with the original story of the Snow Queen so I did enjoy becoming more familiar with this classic. Our protagonist, Thyra is cursed and must reassemble the immortality mirror before her 18th birthday if she doesn't want to be doomed to spend eternity as a wraith. I still do love fairytales so I'm glad I read this book it was enjoyable. I just wasn't wowed. Thank you to net galley for my ARC.

Decent enough writing but not enough to fully have me immersed in the story. I liked where the plot went but it was sort of predictable and lacked any real intrigue.

I thought this book was very well written, and took me on a great adventure that was entirely new to me! I have never read the fairy-tale that this story is a loose retelling of, and while I thought that might affect the reading experience for me, it didn't at all!
I especially loved the main character, as i found her to be very empowering and inspirational!

Overall, I would recommend this book to young girls (or boys) wishing to escape reality and delve into a fairy-tale full of twists and turns!

I dont know what it was about this book but i just couldn't get into this story at all. I just couldn't connect with it.It was well written and the im sure its a great story for the right person but it just wasn't for me.

That was pretty awful. Like, unbelievably so. I usually try to find something positive to say about the books I read, but this I honestly did not enjoy one bit. It kind of hypnotized me with how absolutely awful I thought it was.

This a young adult retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen, told from the perspective of the queen, 17-year-old Thyra Winther (yes, really). She was changed into the Snow Queen by an evil sorcerer, mael Voss, and has until her 18th birthday to fix a shattered mirror that will grant him some kind of power; if she fails she will be turned into a wraith like the countless girls who came before her. To succeed Thyra needs Kai's help because he is the only person as good at maths as she is, so she concocts plans to get him away from his family into her ice palace. I thought that was a really interesting premise and it could have been great - what happens to a girl if she is left on her own in a snow palace with a near impossible path? What will she do to escape her destiny? But for some reason, the whole story didn't work for me.

For one, it was never explained why fixing the mirror is so difficult that countless girls with their lives on the line couldn't manage it. Isn't that just like a big jigsaw puzzle where you could succeed with trial-and-error? Also, how is maths supposed to help with that? I am the first to admit that my maths skills are a bit rusty, but I did have maths for 13 years in school and a couple more in uni, and I just did not get it. It just seems like that was a cool skill for the heroine and the hero to share, but it seems so lazy, especially in the way it was used (pretty much "we did some mathy math thingy things and - bam - another shard fit" - I am only exaggerating a little).

Second, Thyra: she could have been cool (in the literal sense of the word as well). I would have liked to see how her loneliness warped her and made her inhuman, but I never saw that. The author did tell me that she was icy and evil and twisted, but her actions never seemed like that. They seemed more like the actions of a scared teenager trying at being evil. Maybe that was the point, but she is supposed to be the <b>Snow Queen</b> - I just expected more.

My main problem, however, was the dialogue. It never flowed in the way real conversations did and it often felt like the things said were said because the story needed to get from point A to point B, because a relationship had to develop in a certain way. I never got a sense of the characters as a result of this. Especially the relationship between Thyra and Kai felt unbelievable and rushed. If they had more conversations in a way that showed me how their common interests and problems built a basis on which an understanding could grow that might develop into something more, I might have believed it a bit more.

I really did not enjoy this which is a shame because I love retellings when they are done right. This did not work for me and had me shouting at my book way too many times.

DNF - 35%

I hate to not finish books but I honestly couldn't handle another I this, I that, you this, you that sentence. And that's all there was in this book!

A cute little story of a Snow Queen trying to save herself by putting together a magical mirror that was once broken. It's obvious there are twists, world building, magic and more characters to come in this first book of a series; but I just couldn't handle the writing style any longer. Not only is it juvenile but extremely repetitive. Young adult books do not need to read as though they are for five year olds. Give teens and kids some credit; they can understand a book that doesn't tell us every little thing.

Aside from the language the lack of showing bugged me in Crown of Ice. Every silly thing was described by our main gal and her POV. I know that wolves are loyal to a daily to their leader. I didn't need to be told once, though am okay with mentioning it once; I certainly didn't need to be told four times in 15 pages about the loyalty of a wolf. Onwards the progression of the story and characters went.

Very stilted dialogue, unoriginal descriptions and the lack of understanding of how to write well in first person turned me off. From page 1 I had a feeling the style of writing was going to frustrate me, sadly I was correct.

There might be something here that resembles a good story; I just couldn't hack through anymore "I" statements to get there.

Crown of Ice is a retelling of the classic Snow Queen tale that is told from the pov of the Snow Queen herself.The synopsis and the idea around this make me intrigued.The ending was somewhat unexpected which make me give it 3 stars but apart from it I have a little problem with the writing.

First; I do like the cover of this new edition. A lot better than the first one.

However, the story was quite a let down. <i>The Snow Queen</i> is probably my favorite H C Andersen fairy tale and I'm one of those people who wasn't completely enamored by <i>Frozen</i> because it was not the retelling I wanted. Don't get me wrong; I liked <i>Frozen</i>, but I can't see it as a retelling of this fairy tale. And I'm not a fan of this retelling either. It felt too simple, too predictable (yes, it's a retelling, but a good retelling still puts twists and spins on the original story that were not expected) and I was not a fan of the characters.

Also - and I'm not sure if this was due to the Kindle ARC format - but there were a lot of sentences that jumped around on the page. Half of a sentence would be at the top, the other half somewhere in the middle. Did not help with smooth reading. And a lot of sentences lacked a capital letter at the start. I usually don't get too bothered by this when correcting essays as a teacher - but when it's a full length novel my fingers just start to itch and I want to edit the errors.

I did enjoy bits and pieces of it towards the end, though, which is why I got the rating up to two stars. But it is not a series that I will continue reading.

http://fkrants.blogspot.com/2017/04/april-ng-fails-2017.html

This is exactly the kind of book I love to read, any retelling of a fairy tale is bound to interest me in a book. As a child The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson was one of my favourite stories so when I learnt that this was a retelling of it I was very excited.
It was the cover of the book that first drew me to it as I love wolves and the version of the book I read had a wolf on it as well as a girl with long blonde hair and a beautiful blue dress.
Thyra Winther was only five years old when her parents died. She was an emotional girl who was reduced to tears at the slightest thing, unfortunately this time her wails caused an avalanche which killed her parents. Thyra was saved by a wind which blew her out of harms way, a wind conjured by Mael Voss.
Mael Voss only saved her for his own selfish reasons though, because he needed her to do something for him.
Later he taught her magic and brought her to live in his palace as the latest in a long line of snow queens.
“If I leave an area in darkness, they come – the girls who reigned as Snow Queen before me. ‘I must find it.’ Their hollow words twist about me like a shroud. ‘The last piece. I must place it. Give it to me.’ “
The former queens are cursed to live forever in agony because they failed to piece together a shattered looking glass.
“It is simple enough to connect my fate to the stories I heard as a child, told in hushed tones near a brightly burning fire. How long ago, Voss stole a girl from one of the surrounding towns and turned her into something the villagers could comprehend, and fear. The embodiment of brutal winters, of ice and death – the snow queen. “
Voss gave the queen the power to control the weather and prevent herself getting frostbite. She also had the ability to send animals and people into a stupor. However, she had the same limitations as Thyra, she was confined to the Northern realms and if she didn’t help him fix the mirror before her 18th birthday then she would be doomed to be a wraith.
Thyra was 17 years old and had only five months before she would become a wraith like the others.
“They failed, all those who came before me. But I will conquer Voss’ task. I am no ordinary girl – nothing like the wraiths, although they were once a bit like me. I am brighter than the borealis, sharper than an ice crystal, stronger than the northern winds. I will reassemble the mirror and reign as Snow Queen forever.”
In a bid to solve the puzzle of the mirror a bit quicker she looks to a boy she met when she was 11. Kai Thorsen has an analytical mind just like Thyra and she feels like she needs his help if she is to stop herself becoming a wraith.
In her attempts to lure Kai to her she abducts a wolf cub named Luki and end up looking after him.
Kai is desperate to get away from his dreary life and marriage to a girl named Gerda who he has little desire to be with. He follows Thyra without question but he doesn’t reckon Gerda searching the land to find him.
Together Thyra and Kai realise there are 3 missing pieces to the mirror and together they set out to search for them.
I read this book in one day and I cannot wait to read the sequel.

An interesting story to say the least. I never though solving complex math equations would be something I would need later in my life, much less something you could structure a fairytale around. But I am impressed, cause in this case it works.

The story might be somewhat predictable at times, but it's most unusual, something you did not read before, and definitely a head-scratcher as it makes you wonder where does the story go? But it does have a way of drawing you in. It's not simple, it more subtle and it has a knack for throwing things at you to make it more interesting. And whenever there seems to be a lull in the story something always happens to pick up the pacing.

The end is a standard fairytale happily ever after, only here it comes with a twist. A twist that serves as introduction to book two of the series.  And it makes you want to read it all the more.

The plot is well developed, as I said earlier. Whenever there's a lull in the story, the author always does something to pick it up. And the characters may seem shallow in the beginning, but just as the story they pick up as you go along.

All in all a great read, and I for one am excited to read the next one in the series. Even if that means waiting awhile

Unfortunately, I don't think this book was for me. I really liked the premise of a a retelling of The Snow Queen, especially when the main character is the villain in the original tale. However, I didn't really enjoy it.

The pacing was off, with fast parts and slow parts intermixed until I couldn't really figure out what was going on or keep up with the pacing. It completely threw me for a loop. There was very little world-building and fantasy elements in a book that should have been built on those fundamentals. The romance was lacking, and I didn't buy it.

I wanted to love this book, but I think it provided elements that I wasn't looking for in a fantasy read and lacked the elements I wanted to see. It was an okay read, but not what I was really hoping for in the end.

I was very intrigued by the concept of this book as soon as I read about it, I just loved the idea of a Snow Queen retelling. To begin with I really wasn't enjoying the way in which it was written and I didn't connect or sympathise with the characters at all. The main character whom the story is centred around is Thyra Winther (The Snow Queen) and the plot follows her in her task to fix a mirror which would enable her to become the immortal Snow Queen or if she fails become a wraith to which she would suffer forever. I really didn't like her at all to begin with and that impacted my thoughts on the rest of the book. The world-building left a lot to be desired and the plot was some what predictable. However when I was just about to give up about half way through, I actually started to like it which is strange for me because I often make my mind up on what I think early on and not much can change it. So the book went from a one star to a three star which is honestly incredible considering my feelings at the start.

Now lets get into the nitty gritty about the plot. I feel like there was a great concept behind it but I felt like it was too rushed, there was a lot of jumping around and skipping time at the beginning and that definitely didn't help. I didn't enjoy the parts at the beginning where Thyra was coming up with a plan to kidnap Kai in order to get him to help her. However I enjoyed the little flashback to when they met as I feel like it really helped to flesh out the story. I think it would have been great to see more from Thyra's past, it would have helped to show her characters progression. I also enjoyed the love hate relationship between Kai and Thyra although when he finds out about her lies I didn't like how he was only mad for a minute and then in love with her again. There could have been a really great angsty relationship if it was more slow burning although I do appreciate the banter and humour the author weaved into some of the conversations between the two characters, One of my favourite parts of the story was when Thyra went to see the Wanderers and talked to Gerda while she was locked up, I thought that conversation between the two characters was vital in the turning point of the story.

Overall I feel like the book was pretty average and wouldn't recommend it for anyone who is looking for intricate high fantasy like in Throne of Glass or The Grisha Trilogy but if you are looking for a lighthearted fantasy read that is short and fast paced this is definitely the book for you. The re-telling aspects I enjoyed and I feel like if you do enjoy retelling's in general you will probably like this and should give it a read. I had a very love hate relationship with the book while reading it but I am glad that I carried on reading and didn't give up because I really found it quite enjoyable when I finally got into it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Snowy Wings Publishing for sending me a copy in exchange for honest review.

3/5 Stars

I received a free E Arc from Netgalley.

Crown of Ice is a fun read, if a little unrounded in places. The main characters are all portrayed well but I think the story would have faired well if it had been a little longer and had allowed the characters longer to develop.

The whole idea of the mathematical element to the story was stretching it a little too much for me, as was the eventual reason as to why the mirror was smashed in the first place. These were just two of the elements where I think a little more attention to detail would have resulted in a more complete telling of the story. The ending was also far too easy considering the build up to the difficulties between Thyra and her Magi.

Overall, it's an enjoyable YA read and one I think my teenagers will enjoy perhaps more than I.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy Crown of Ice. The plot and characters did not capture my attention, as such, I could not get through 50% of the book.