Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an advance copy of this book to review.
I DNFd this book around 30% of the way through though I really did enjoy the portion I read though. The book is beautifully written and the story is interesting and unique. I stopped reading just because the pacing was a little slow for me and I had some other books I was really excited to pick up. I am hoping to finish the book down the road, but I really wanted to get my thoughts out there before the book is released. I'll update this when I finish the book.

2.4
I tried to get into this one, but ultimately it was just plain boring. If I hadn’t been committed to finishing the book to write an adequate review, I would’ve DNF’d it and been done. The characters contribute most to this issue. Pretty much all the characters are incredibly flat. I couldn’t tell you any personality traits of any of them after reading the whole book. The evil prince is technically not flat, but I found his “redemption” story unconvincing if not nonsensical, so I didn’t really find that as much of an improvement. Further, the plot moves at a glacial pace. It takes about 30% of the book to even present the premise of what’s actually going on. So many of the chapters prior have a bunch of verbiage that still leaves Ember (and the reader) thinking “wait, so what is going on?” Only to try and explain a bit more (to little or no avail) in the next chapter. I think this was to avoid infodumping, but it essentially just infodumped for much longer since there wasn’t much other development in those chapters. This is significant since the plot was actually quite simple. Some stuff happens for the next 30% bringing in a few new characters who still aren’t very interesting and featuring some action. Then the last 40% is just Ember swooning over someone for literally no reason other than that his sapphire eyes are SO hawt.

The other biggest issue is the book’s difficulty with fulfilling promises. The beginning of the book, while it was slow, at least set up some cool stuff with a chick-led heist story with a potential F/F love triangle in a torn-apart world with evil villains and a wealth of different magic. Then the main character gets captured, there’s no pay-off on the initial romance, the magic is incredibly vague, and the heist plot disappears. Ember kept referring to the group she was with earlier as her “friends,” but I began to wonder why seeing as she wasn’t with them long and was happy to trip over herself trying to get in bed with their enemy after he kidnapped her and threw temper tantrums, calling her useless for a couple days. Not only is the heist not on-screen, it basically doesn’t occur. The romantic tension with the two women earlier on is forgotten as if it never happened. There are times when such a setup and twist could make for interesting subversion. Instead it just felt like two different books crammed together.

For the most part, I’d just give this book 2 stars given the above issues. But I did feel like the prose was actually quite strong considering. Most of the descriptions were fairly vibrant and expansive, painting a picture of the characters and scene that the emotional beats were unable to accomplish. So I gave a few points for that. I would’ve given more but the book also strayed too often into being overwritten because of it and eventually, the prose got lazier and lazier with lots of repetition beyond intentional descriptive devices (ie, character tags are great in moderation, but the prince’s eyes are likened to sapphires 38 different times—and the word “sapphire” appears 9 other times in other descriptions—in the book, which is way overdoing it for a book this length. I began to think he might just literally have sapphires for eyes). Because of this, I wasn’t willing to give it too much of a bonus, despite liking a portion of the prose to some extent. I will also say that the definition of purple prose varies a lot from reader to reader. This book only strayed into that category a few times for me, but I think for a lot of readers it’d be too much.

There is actually decently cool world-building, even if some of it just felt like a Grisha rip-off. This sort of raises the book in my eyes, but I had a hard time enjoying it when such good ideas were often overshadowed or left vague when it came time to actually feature them. The book describes three different magic systems spread across three planes of existence, each with their own mechanics and aesthetic. Practitioners of each play key roles in the story and the magic is used throughout the few action scenes around the middle of the book. But most of the time I forgot most of these elements were there as the story focused on the brooding prince’s angst trying to convince me to care about him rather than the world. When the magic is used, it just kind of happens and little is done to make it all that interesting or dynamic. Still, I was willing to bump up my score a bit for the attention to coming up with these elements as I think they had the potential to turn the book around some if they were handled better.

Despite some of the better aspects of the novel, I can’t really recommend this book to anyone. Being dull is a fatal flaw for most any book and the other elements did little to mitigate that effect for me. Maybe a sequel would get better with this story arc out of the way, but while this wasn’t super long (it wasn’t super short either), I don’t think I’d have the patience to sit through another book like it. It’s clear from other reviews so far that it has its fans, but I have a hard time understanding why, even after reading some of them.

I was provided an advanced copy by NetGalley. All opinions herein are my own.

A beautiful cover and great idea. Was initially excited but couldn't connect, despite being a huge fan of this genre and loving the description. A little slow but truly captivating in some places, despite some cliches.

Quick summary: Ember finds herself in an unknown world where everyone seems to want a piece of her. including the Crescent Prince.

I really wanted to like this book but I’m sad to say that it just felt really flat to me. The characters and the worldbuilding. Ember has entire dialogues in her head and sometimes I got lost. Like did I miss an interaction? Ember easily gets swayed by Ada at the beginning to dislike Mordecai, almost too easily.

I love magic in books but even that couldn’t help me out with liking any of the characters.

I skimmed through most of this book, it didnt grab my attention especially the beginning. The ending is what made it a little bit better I guess.
No spoilers though but.

The cover is really beautiful though, points to the talented artist.

This book has a lot of things going for it. First, it's quite technically sound. The story started in the right place, and it was quite smart actually. I loved how the character was just as confused and unsure of the world as I, the reader was. And while this book was littered with tropes and was predictable in some ways, it did not feel cliche. There was still something refreshing and original about it. I loved seeing a character who just had no idea what was happening and had to figure it all out right alongside me.

That's not to say that it was perfect. Unfortunately, the turning point for the main character was just too late in the novel. I was at about 74% in the ebook when Ember finally stopped letting everything just happen to her and became proactive in the plot, making decisions about who was in the right and in the wrong by herself. Because of this, there was only the last 16% of the novel where Ember was the one calling the shots, and unfortunately, that was the best part of the novel. I think that if the turning point had been a bit sooner, I would have loved it more because, until that point, Ember's just floating along. While we are in her head the entire time, I did feel like I knew her until the turning point.

Ember still felt quite real though. Major props to the authors for writing a character who was so vivid and three-dimensional. Ember menstruates, something a lot of YA books seem to gloss over or skip unless it is a major inconvenience to the main character. She made both good and bad decisions throughout the book and had to own up to them, another very realistic situation even in a fantastical setting. It added a sense of realness to the world that I believe a lot of people appreciated.

The world was quite imaginative. It did, however, lack a certain solidness. I don't' know if that's because the magic in the realm was illusion magic or not, but I felt like there was vagueness surrounding the whole world (well, worlds, there are three of them but we'll get to that in a moment). It did not really clear up until the end of the novel. In a way, I felt like this could have been intentional as the book is narrated by Ember in the first person and I wonder if it had to do with how little she knew of the three realms. That being said, I still felt like there was something missing. Also, there did not seem to be a great many rules surrounding the world and the magic in it. This definitely had a weak/simplistic magic system.

One thing I would have loved would have been a flash-back to Ember's world, especially because it felt a bit more solid than the rest and I was quite curious about how things worked there. It would have given a much-needed insight into Ember's past and help me connect to her before her big mentality shift.

Lastly, I'm going to talk about the relationships, and for once I'm not going to bash them. While it wasn't subtle or a slow-burn, it didn't make my skin crawl nor did I want to punch the love interest in the face every time he opened his. This isn't the most perfect romance ever, and it sure was predictable from the moment the name was mentioned, There a semblance to The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo that I liked as well, but only a resemblance. It didn't feel like outright copying or anything as it did fit in with the plot, but anyone would be hard-pressed to deny the similarities between the Darkling and the Crescent Prince.

In all, I think this will appeal to fantasy lovers who don't mind a bit of romance. Fans of Shadow and Bone should find this book very enjoyable too.

(This is the script I will basing my video review off of set to go up the 27th of October on my YouTube channel. The video will then be embedded in the BookAxe review area as well as linked in a Goodreads review. Links will be added when the video is live.)

Evenfall tells the story of our MC, Ember, waking up in an unfamiliar world filled with magic, illusions, truths, lies, brightness and darkness.


I really wanted to love this book, the description seemed right up my alley. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. It was ~ok.


The storyline was hard to get into and I felt myself getting bored throughout. It recycled a lot of tropes that are in most YA fantasy novels but I just didn't feel like they were executed to the fullest extent.


I hate leaving reviews when I don't love a book as I know that writing is a passion project. I encourage the writers to stick with it as they do have talent and can write, the book just wasn't really for me.


*thank you to NetGalley and Xpresso Book Tours for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Evenfall was just okay. It has the makings of what could be a pretty good story. Unfortunately, there was a lot of infodumping and confusion going on for a lot of the book.

The first third of the book pretty much consisted of our heroine, Ember, trying to figure out what was going on. She made friends with another young lady, Ada, who tried to explain to Ember where they were and what was happening. Only they didn't spill it out all at once. Perhaps this occurred in order to prevent the reader from getting too much information all at once, but the limited action occurring while Ember was learning about the world... eating breakfast, walking to Ada's home, was not very exciting. There were a lot of slow parts like this throughout the book. Although it did pick up quite a bit towards the end.

Ember was being chased by the Crescent Prince. Her new friends saw him as a monster. They were trying to avoid him. Then she was caught.

All of this occurred among a magical backdrop where Ember didn't think that she could wield magic of her own.

I wish that I could have liked this book better. The sequel might be more interesting, as the action was just starting to pick up towards the last quarter of the book. We'll see.

This book read like me trying to drive a stick transmission in stop-and-go traffic with some rude honker people at rush hour. Get going, putter out. Get going, putter out. HONK! Move it, lady! And so on. I had a hard time being motivated to read and found myself avoiding reading because I simply did not enjoy most of this book.

To begin, we readers are thrown into a story, in media res (but without the action so much), and then we are left, much like the MC, trying to figure out what is going on, where we are, who we are, and who is everyone else? No background of characters, world, story, etc. is given for anything, and when it, in rare occasions, is given, the bits and pieces of it are confusing and so sparse that it is hard to connect the new information with the complementary piece of info given any number of pages or chapters ago-until the halfway point of the story, which I feel is too late to bring a narrative together and make it interesting.

While the last half of Evenfall was well worth the read, I felt a bit let down by the lack of depth in the book. The work promised to be inviting and intriguing but only gave a small piece of itself before shoving the reader, by means of a clichéd cliffhanger, into another. While reading this book, by the end of it, did not feel like a complete waste of time, I don’t feel so enthusiastic about it as to tell everyone to go get it and read it at the first possible opportunity.

First off, I would like to thank NetGalley, publishers and of course the author for this ARC, in return for an honest review.

This is my Honest review of this novel:
Let me start saying, this novel was amazing with minor spelling or grammer errors I still loved and understood the plot. Which brings me to sich, the story plot was amazing and done in an original way. The sequential timeline made it is easy to follow and understand even the mistakes. The world and character building was spot on with the story at every page. Character tropes were perfect also, i loved the authors use of diverse characters.

Now here is the synopsis for this tale:
Quote: "A monster does not deserve the intimacy of a name"
authors Gaja J. Kos, Boris Kos


As if waking up in an unfamiliar world isn't enough of a surprise, Ember gains a new title to her name. Savior.

Hunted by the Crescent Prince and his lethal shadows, she accepts a young Mage's help to navigate the land of blood magic and its many illusions. But where Ada sees the good in her power, Ember discovers something else.

An icy darkness, designed to take lives, not save them.

The only thing worse than not being able to rely on her senses--or the reality she had once believed to be true--is knowing that she cannot trust her heart. Especially as it seems to draw her to the one person in whose hands she can never fall...

Now: my experience reading this novel was amazing. I know it is sometimes harder to read an ebook but I feel so in love with the plot, world, characters and their tropes, that I couldnt put it down!! Fast paced, great action sequences, romances, friendships tested, darkly twisted, and a magic unlike anything I have yet to read. This is going to be one of the top titles for November, possibly a contender for the year!! A truly great read, single POV narrative, and just amazingly written and thought out.

This book would be another book with people traveling through worlds and using magic to defeat a foe if not for this points:
- I love how clueless the main character is when she finds herself in another world. She doesn't take things at face value and even rans from the person that wants to help!
- I also loved how real she was: she even menstruates! No, really... how many books have you found where the main character freely talks about it? Fantasy ones at it.
- the way the book talks about women and how they should be free to use magic and decide what to do with their lives, marry for love and not arranged marriages, etc, really makes a point.
- the world building is amazing. Not only on the world she currently finds herself in but the story of how the worlds where and how they come to be what they are.
- the characters all have their abilities, their fears, their strenghts and their perks

Aside from all this that truly separates this book from similar ones, we find an heroine who really knows how to endear the reader and has a very personal voice. No insta loves and very well built relationships.

I received an eARC from NetGalley, thank you to them and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

I don’t really know where to start with this book. We are thrown into what seems like the middle of the story and slowly receive answers to our many questions. For a long time not a whole lot happens. I considered putting it down but continued because the cover and description had pulled me in so completely. I will say the last half of the book has much more action than the first half but it still fell a little short for me. I think there was too much internal monologue and not enough happening outside of the main character’s head. I think there is a TON of potential here and I liked quite a few things but I couldn’t help feeling like something was missing. Overall I would say that I probably would continue reading the series in hopes that it would improve, but sadly, it wasn’t a new favorite and no one is more disappointed in that fact than me.

I mainly picked this book, because I am a sucker for good covers and this one is absolutely stunning!
Kudos to the cover artist! But we all know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Sadly the story was your unoriginal YA fantasy following Ember our main character, who later throughout her journey as the "chosen one", falls for the Crescent Prince Mordecai. Another case of Insta-love...
In felt the characters were nothing special and not enough developed for my taste. I liked the original idea of the world building, but wanted much more. I might just grow slowly out of YA books and concentrate more on new adult or high fantasy.

This book… this book. My rating was originally 1 star, but I’m bumping it up to 1.5 simply because the ending of this book made me kind of want to read the next one. To be completely fair, this book wasn’t terrible per se. But it wasn’t fun to read, to the point where I almost DNFed more than once. The plot of this book doesn’t really start until you’re halfway through, and even then I found myself constantly confused but also skimming what seemed like a lot of unnecessary information. Almost nothing happens in the entire first half of the book. Also as a general note, I know the author is not a native english speaker, but typos/grammar mistakes are my biggest pet peeve and this book has more than a few. All in all, considering how fun the plot idea is, this book was just generally a disappointment with flat characters (with the exception of the villain).

The Plot: The plot idea is actually amazing. It’s just very poorly executed. Basically, this is a world that has been split into three. Each of these three lands/realms has its own type of magic, and its own type of terrain/climate. Soltzen, the land where the sun is always up (there’s no night) has magical objects. Somarque, the land where it’s always night, has blood magic that can conjure visual and mental illusions. Svitanye, a land we know almost nothing about, is supposed to have some kind of word magic. We have these details, but that’s basically it. There’s almost no world building, which means that for the most part, we are simply told this context at one point in the book. We also only get to see one of these worlds - Somarque, despite the fact that the main heroine is from Soltzen. But even then, I didn’t understand that it was perpetually night until much later in the book.

The Characters:
Ember is out main character, and from page one we know she is special. I’ve read lots of books where the main character is special because of their specialness, and I generally don’t mind. But here, it’s way, way over the top. The first time another character encounters her, she’s called “the one” and “the savior” and we really don’t find out why she’s so special until two thirds of the way through the book, and she doesn’t exhibit her special magic powers until halfway through the book. She more or less accepts everything that happens to her from the minute she falls through a magic portal into a new world she has never heard of or seen before. Her reaction to everything that happens in this book is unbelievable, because she’s totally okay with it and believes everything anyone tells her. Otherwise, she has no personality except she’s ‘rebellious’ aka she had sex before marriage, the only rebellious thing a girl can do.
There are a bunch more characters who have no personality, and two of them are women who had a relationship.
The villain is the most interesting character in this story, though we don’t meet him until more than halfway through. Mordecai is actually a very three-dimensional character with real motivations, which is a total novelty in this book. He’s the only one I was interested in learning about, and may possibly read the next book for.

I absolutely loved reading this book. It has everything I love in a book. The finding of ones self, magic, captivating storyline, a little bit of angst and finding a purpose. The magic system is amazing. I can’t wait to read more. This book is written like a gorgeous tapestry; you can see it unfurling before you and it takes your breath away.

Raise your hand if you are a victim of cover lust. Oh, you too? Same. I am a total sucker for a good cover and wow is this cover gorgeous. Did this book live up to its beautiful cover? Maybe?!? I feel so conflicted because for the most part I felt this book was slow and I struggled to stay engaged, but I also loved the concept, the villain, and again that cover though.

The first 50% of this book is essentially a giant game of hide and seek. And that was cool when I was kid, but less engaging as an adult trying to follow a plot and fall in love with a story. The hide & seek nature made it hard for me to emotionally connect with the characters. The main character Ember was hard to understand and wasn’t as fleshed out as would’ve liked. She spent the first half of the book basically as a pawn, running and hiding, and it didn’t really match the authors’ descriptions of her as a patriarchy-smashing heroine.

The last half of the book is a bit better - you finally get some action and emotional depth in the characters and some slight Beauty and the Beast vibes. I loved getting to explore the villainous Mordecai (hello, nice Darkling vibes!) and learning more about the magical of the world as Ember develops her powers. Plus, I love when books challenge characters’ notions of good and evil - so that was a plus here! The concepts of the separate worlds and how they were connected was interesting and if I decide to continue with the story it will be in large part thanks to this! While the worldbuilding was interesting, I struggled with how it translated into a plot and felt there were too many holes and not enough exploration.

I’m also conflicted about the romance in this story. At first, I loved how Ember and Mordecai’s relationship ebbed and flowed but it took an insta-love turn and the ending didn’t feel authentic to me. I got total Beauty and the Beast vibes from their relationship tho and I’m not complaining.

Overall, I think this series has promise and I would look forward to more character development and action in the next books.

Please visit my blog, GoodeyReads (www.goodeyreads.com) for the full review!

A TALE OF TWO BOOKS.

I was truly contemplating putting this book down through the first half. I felt like I was reading about Ada’s story rather than Ember’s and Ember was some kind of narrator for the entire saga.

I was annoyed to no end about how everyone kept calling Ember a savior, the One, etc., but she herself had NO IDEA what anyone was talking about!!?

Then, I got to the half way point.

Then, I met Mordecai.

Then, things got SOOO much better. I mean really, I thought I was reading a different book altogether.

The story became increasingly darker. I enjoyed every second of nefarious characters showing some twisted benevolence.

Last note, this book was a total cover request. Merwild does AMAZING artwork and I’ve been a fan for awhile. This cover is absolutely gorgeous.

I received this from Netgalley for an honest review.


I didn't love this, but I didn't hate it either. I however struggled with coming through it, and it felt at times almost dry. However, this is a debut novel so take that into consideration. I will eventually check this author out again, but I don't think this series is for me. I didn't find the characters at all that interesting and, it just made me struggle through the entire book.

Okay, well I've tried writing this review several times but have always come up short because I have absolutely almost nothing to say in regards to Evenfall.

You want to read the most typical, YA novel there is well this will be perfect for you! Full of genre tropes from a female "saviour" type character, to falling in love with the villain, to the one LGBT character they are all really there in spades.

Ember is a high masters daughter, in her world only male high masters control magic objects, and women of Ember's stature are good for one thing "breeding". One night Ember opens/falls through a portal into another world and immediately the one person who finds her identifies her as their "saviour". Apparently Ember has unique Magic that will allow her to unite 3 different worlds that once belonged together but had become separated.
The only thing is that Ember needs to stay away from the Crescent Prince who has been searching for Ember her whole life, to turn her into a weapon. Of course as soon as Ember lays eyes on him, she can.not.keep.away.literally.he.is.the.most.beautiful.man.she's.ever.seen. *eye roll*.

Things obviously happen, and then the end comes just in time for you to know there will be a sequel. Now did this book make me care enough to read what happens next, no. Do I wish it did, a little. The author had quite a great idea in mind for the story, and it could have been unique and new but the way it current reads it very much a typical YA novel.

I thought the plot was so interesting, with the concept of different worlds. At first I was dubious of the plot, which I thought was weak then it developed into more. The author took time shaping the characters and of course, there is a great love story involved. ] I already want to read the second book!

Evenfall wasn't bad. But... it wasn't drop-dead amazing. I feel like my main problem with this book was the pacing. Fortunately, it was not slow. That would be BAD. But it was very fast, so fast that sometimes it was hard to keep up with what was going on in the story. I felt like I was thrust into the book expected to know everything about the plot, setting, and characters. Which leads me to my next point. The world building in this novel wasn't amazing (in my humble opinion). I didn't get as much information about the setting and its characteristics as I would have liked.

It was still a great story, though, and I found myself liking our main character, Ember, quite a bit.

Thank you to Netgalley, Gaja and Boris Kos, and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this novel!