I liked this novella, however because the story was so short, I felt that it was a bit rushed. It made it a little hard to really get a feel of the characters to be able to really connect with the story. The story line was good but I jus couldn't connect.

Lately I've been finding novella's, despite their shorter page count, have done an amazing job of introducing the characters, the world and the gist of what's going on leaving you wanting to read more of the series.

That wasn't the case with this.

I found that the introductions and world building were rushed. I didn't feel immersed enough in the world and I didn't feel like I knew the characters very well by the end of it.

The synopsis sounded like everything up my alley, but this book just left me feeling like a big something was missing.

I loved this so much, I want to dive into this world and see what happens next. I really liked how it was an introduction to the world and the characters. I read it in one sitting as I did not want to put it down.

Unfortunately because this is a Novella it does not give enough time for the story, world or characters to be developed.
It leaves you wondering why the author bothered with this!

Good novel, more suitable for pre adolescents than for young adults. Maybe too short for all that has been included in the plot.

This book was a bit predictable, and I feel it would be better marketed to pre-teen readers or young teens than young adult. Despite the fact that it was a novella instead of a full novel, it seemed that the author was trying to fit a full novel worth of information and plot in it. It was an okay book but I probably will not be reading more.

This introduction to the world of Whyland is short, sweet and well written. In a few scene I wished a bit more interaction with sidecharacters but that can be also a personal preference. Also I was pleasently surprised to find a character with the same name as mine but was even more surprised about the fate of my name doppelganger.

Have you ever read the back of a book and then found yourself so enticed that you have no choice but to pick it up? As book people, I’m sure we’ve all been there. In the best case scenario, you wind up with a book you love, one that the memories of which drives you to seek comfort in the arms of fanfiction for years to come. (Okay, maybe that’s just me.)

That unfortunate confession aside, sometimes that gamble goes the other way. Sometimes you get a book that isn’t what the back of the book promised. The book that initially excited you ends up disappointing.

This is exactly the experience I had with Day Leitao’s The Spell Speakers.


The Spell Speakers is advertised as an intro novella. The idea being that this novella is meant to introduce the characters and setting of an upcoming series. (This is actually the same strategy that Sarah J. Maas took with her Throne of Glass series.) The novella introduced 14-year-old Darian, a boy raised in a hidden village in a place called Whyland. Darian has been raised to fear the power of the empire, who persecutes users of magic. Or people somehow related to magic. It’s not super clear.

Everything changes for Darian when tragedy forces him to leave his homeland and take up residence in the empire he was taught to hate. There he meets Cayla, a girl who shares the same lost feeling he himself harbors. With his new love, Darian hopes to change the empire for good, freeing his people and finding the life he always hoped for.

As The Spell Speakers is a novella, it doesn’t have a large page count for the author to work with. That’s one of the challenges of the format. Because of this, the book is paced very quickly. The events of Darian’s life so far all happen very quickly. In fact, they happen too quickly. As the reader, I hardly felt I had the time to really process an event before I was pushed on to the next one and I found it hard to really connect with the character’s tragedy. If he didn’t have enough time to care about it then why should I?

In fact, that is the largest problem with the book: finding the time or energy to care about its characters. Not only are they introduced quickly, they zip in and out of view so quickly that none have the chance to really develop. Some of them even seem unsure of who they are supposed to be in any given scene. And that’s the thing: none of these characters feel worth reading about, nor are any of them strong enough to lead the series this novella is presumably kicking off.

Worse yet, ignoring the characters, there is nothing in this novella strong enough to ignite interest in a series. The world never gets more depth than “evil empire persecuting the people of the world”. Looking at the title, there are no real spells, no magic other than a questionable amulet. And as far as speaking, the dialogue will make you hope that any spells to come are non-verbal in nature.

I can’t in good faith recommend The Spell Speakers to anyone, nor will I be checking out any additional works that may come out of its world. I did not enjoy my visit to Whyland and suggest skipping this one.

2.5 - 3 stars
The Spell Speakers is a short novella about magic, wizards and sweet love between main and side character.
I did find the story interesting at times, but the writing style didn't make for a very inviting character development. I feel like it was missing something...
I'm having mixed feelings...

**Received an ARC from the Publisher via Netgalley**

First, I would like to commend this book for having such a great cover. Yeah, I can totally say, that I am a sucker for books that has a great cover and this is why it usually affects my judgement on why I pick a book.

But with this, Am very sad to say that It did not reach my expectation at all. The teaser was interesting. But then the story lacks the enthusiasm I was looking for.

There are moments I would like to just drop it and don’t finish it at all. But then again, I believe how could I ever give an honest review without giving it a shot until the end. Sad to say, the book did not progress at all. The story is predictable. Characters are under developed. The flow was a little bit slow for my liking. The world building also lacks depth and uniqueness.

First, I do not think the cover matches the book at all. The main character is Darian not Cayla.
Darian has been raised by his mother in a hidden village that resists the king. When his mother dies he finds out that his father is actually a commander in the king's army and that he has a brother. Darian is now forced into a life of serving the king. Soon he meets a girl Cayla and he falls for her, not knowing she is the queen's daughter. Can Darian stay true to himself and resist the king from the inside?
Lots of espionage and a bit of romance. My main issue with this is that as an introductory novella it is pretty short and leaves many things hanging and unresolved. The reader can sense that the author is laying the groundwork but I don't think there is enough there yet.

So first things first I love the cover, very nice and it draws the eye. The novella itself wasn’t bad but the writing in places was slightly stilted and a little childish at times. I don’t know if that was because the protagonist was only 14 but still it grated a little. The plot though was good and interesting and set the tone for what the future books will be about. I would suggest a slightly smoother writing style though with a wider breadth of description and vocabulary. All in all not bad.

So I got 25% into this book and had to stop. I really didn't like it. The writing style was so jerky, the sentences terrible, the description was non-existent. It felt so run-on to me. I knew nothing about the MC, and didn't feel connected to him in any way. I couldn't keep going, despite the short length.

* *
2 / 5


I didn't realise this was a novella when I requested it on Netgalley - my, myself, and I don't get on all that well with novellas for the exact reason that this book didn't work for me: it was too short for how much it tried to pack in. Spell Speakers: An Intro to Whyland tries to cover all of the following in a book that took me under thirty minutes to read: boy lives in village that supposedly practices illegal magic (very little magic is featured in book), boy loses his mum, boy meets his dad who he thought was dead and brother he didn't know existed, boy's entire life changes, boy meets girl in forbidden romance, etc. It was all just too much.

The purpose of this book, I believe, was to serve as an introduction to the universe that Day Leitao will write more books in. But I didn't really get that much sense of the world that Darian lived in. Neither was the cast all that compelling; the characters don't feel that distinguishable, although Darian's brother has a fair amount of potential, which is mostly a result of the rather basic writing style. I feel like Spell Speakers is aimed at a very young audience.

What did I like? I adore the cover art, which I think is very well done, and I thought that Darian had some compelling qualities as a main character. He is innocent, wide-eyed, and curious, and his life has a lot of drama that the author will be able to get some mileage out of.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book

Personal rating 2.5 stars

This is an opening novella which I think is aimed at setting up the world ready for the series to continue.

The novella is only 108 pages long and personally, I didn't think there was enough world building, or that enough happened in the book for it to be a separate book. I think that this could have easily been slightly condensed and been the first few chapters in the first actual book in the series.

Not enough happened in the novella to capture my attention and make me want to continue reading the series.

I also personally found some of the speech a little confusing and there were chunks that had no indication to who was talking.

I was drawn to this one by the beautiful cover. The blurb sounded interesting, so I was happy to start it. While the story was okay, I am confused as to who the intended audience is, since it has mature content, yet takes on a more juvenile voice in the dialogue.

The Spell Speakers is cute short novella about magic, wizards and sweet love between main and side character. I just can't help, but their scenes... It was just too cute and adorable!
Although, I don't think that this book is something special, there's something great about it and I must say, that I at least enjoyed reading it.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The familiar fantasy tropes are here: Village boy. First tick on the checklist. Village boy forced to leave said village. Another tick. Village boy meets princess . Of course, he must. Tick. Village boy is at the cusp of manifesting unexplained powers/abilities/magic. Naturally, tick. The whole fate of the world rests on the village boy's little shoulders. Tick, tick, tick.

Being an introductory novella into the forthcoming Whyland fantasy series, there is not a great deal of exposition, but perhaps a little more explanation would have been nice. We are drawn into a world where the people are being repressed by the very army that is suppose to protect them. Why they are being repressed and why this magic from the North is so feared is not explained at all.

The dialogue between the characters are stilted and just doesn't flow off the page, the situations seemed forced and the word-building barely drawn.

Nevertheless, under all of this criticism there is a promise of a really good story and I am intrigued.

*Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review *

This was a cute novella that serves as an introduction to a world.
Now, I know that it was a novella, but I still wanted it to be just a little longer, because I didn't get as much of an understanding of the characters, as I get in a little longer books.
But what we got was enjoyable.

-Netgalley Review-
8.5/10

The story is interesting, but The plot have very inconsistent pacing and the writing used to introduce characters was quite stilted. The premise of the story was very interesting and there was obviously a lot of World-building been done in the background as several major elements was introduced. However, the significance of how or why magic important or even relevant to the central conflict between the oppressed people and the quote unquote Evil King is vague at best and poorly written at worst as the meanings of magical items such as the twin necklace was described in the first few chapters and then developed into a sudden relevation central to the two main characters’ character arc. There was a sharp absence of necessary foreshadowing to display its narrative significance.

The dialogue was okay, the character interaction was readable. The story used dialogue to explore character backstories and other such matters; that was okay. The dialogue exchanged between the characters wasn’t memorable, but they served the purpose of carrying the story forward and they did a pretty excellent job on that front.

I like how the story developed the romance between Darian and Cayla. I genuinely enjoyed the final resolution to the novella and I truly believed that there is a lot of amazing potential to explore as the writer has a strong grip on the two characters’ perspective on the world. I don’t mind reading more and I certainly wouldn’t mind reading future works set in the same continuity.

I have never read any works by Day Leitao, and I certainly can see the appeals of this book as the romance and the political intrigue elements that the story alludes to be present in its sequels is offers a good hook. The ending showed the resolve no the direction the main cast of characters had chosen to undertake. Without going into details, I could honestly say that I liked what the author did that regard. The characters actually became more and more developed as the plot threads forward.

It is a cute story, but I just wish the writing was a bit better and the writer had created memorable lines of dialogue and fascinating moments that the average reader could remember of the top of their head, and I also wish that the story was a bit deeper, but I know that this is still just an intro novella for a larger series, and hopefully the depth will come later. Thanks to the writer for creating this story and I hope to have the chance of reviewing later books in the series.