I received this book for an honest review. The blurb sounded fascinating and I couldn’t wait to start. However as I progress I found I just couldn’t get into the book. Maybe someone else will like this?

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my review in any way and the thoughts expressed are my own.
The blurb for this young adult novel makes it seem like the POV is going to follow Thelia, cousin to the Princess secretly planning to become Queen herself, yet she is only one of four POVs we follow. The others are Parsival, her cousin, Bayled, the King’s ward and apparent heir, and Sapphire, an elf and member of the invading army. The sheer number of POVs strained the story and failed to make each interesting and have their own suspense. Ultimately, it is what led to me finding this one a dull read. Any intrigue in one POV was ruined by the perspective found in the alternate POVs, it weakened the impact and made everything feel like it wasn’t that very high stakes or emotional. I found having Parsival as a POV a redundant choice as he is always with Thelia and has a similar personality to her.
The element of having Sapphire, an unwilling part of the occupying force, was a decent counter to the human perspective. Plus, it was a good representation of having a non-binary character present, whose plot didn’t revolve around their gender – it wasn’t even thought of as being odd by the humans. I enjoyed watching them learn about humans and gradually become friends with them.
The magic system wasn’t very relevant as the plot was mostly focused on the regular people imprisoned in the castle. The pacing slowed down greatly in the middle, while I can see why I author did this to illustrate the boredom and despair of the imprisoned, it still made it hard to get through.
For me, this would have been maybe a 3 star book, but the excess number of POVs and ruin of any tension made it this a 2/ 5 star book.

I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

I was quite interested after reading the blurb but unfortunately I did not enjoy this one at all. Just feel I wasted my time reading it.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't work for me. A lot of aspects of the story fell flat, from the characters to the relationships to the plot itself. It doesn't really feel like a lot happens, and it made the book hard to get through for me. I also just wasn't a fan of any of the characters, and found them overly frustrating at times. The writing style, which could have saved a book even if the rest wasn't great, also didn't work for me either. There was also some LGBTQ+ rep but I didn't fully like how it was done. The bisexual character falls into a lot of stereotypes, namely the 'will sleep with anyone and everyone' assumption, and it's not an assumption that's really changed in the story either. I also wish the non-binary character had been developed more.

Overall, this really wasn't the book for me.

I'm always looking for new books to read. One with ideas and concepts no one has ever thought of before. As soon as I heard about the elven detail of this book I knew I definitely wanted to read it. However, as much as I wanted to like this book it just wasn't for me. I was extremely confused with where the story was going and the multiple PoVs made it difficult for me to grasp onto an idea of what the plot was. I have mixed feelings about the romance and the characters and I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

To be honest, was a bit of a slog getting through this book. Quite boring and the execution just fell a bit flat. I kept getting confused with the POVs and I wasn't interested enough to properly try and follow the story. DNF'd. Not for me sorry.

I started reading this one but didn't hold my interest. I though the concept was good but I wish I could have connected with the characters more.

DNF. I couldn't be bothered to finish this book. It seemed like an interesting plot, but the execution was lacking.

Disclaimer: I received this book from netgalley and the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Castle of Lies

Author: Kiersi Burkhart

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 1/5

Diversity: LGBT, but possibly problematic. Nonbinary elf, demisexual, bisexual.

Recommended For...: Court Intrigue

Publication Date: May 7, 2019

Genre: YA Fantasy

Recommended Age: can’t recommend, dnf-ed

Publisher: Carolrhoda

Pages: 352

Synopsis: Thelia isn't in line to inherit the crown, but she's been raised to take power however she can. She's been friends with Princess Corene her whole life, and she's scheming to marry Bayled, the heir to the throne. But her plans must change when an army of elves invades the kingdom. Thelia, her cousin Parsival, and Corene become trapped in the castle. An elf warrior, Sapphire, may be Thelia's only hope of escape, but Sapphire has plans of their own. Meanwhile, an ancient magic is awakening within the castle, with the power to destroy the whole kingdom. Can Thelia find a way to protect her future--and her life?

Review: Uhhhhh I had to DNF this at 34%. This was just pretty bad and from what I’ve read on Goodreads it doesn’t do well with accurate LGBT+ portrayals. The book also just had a lack of character development and world building.

Verdict: Not for me and might be harmful to LGBT+

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this title. I will review this title at a different date.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

Until this time, I don't even know how I got to the end of this book. Yes, it has a good and promising story, but I found it confusing and soooooo long during the reading. It's a pity because I was really looking forward for it.

"eARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

It's not great. Granted, it's not terrible. It's even somewhat amusing. But also it's not great.

The characters seem to change every chapter. One minute Thalia is a manipulative schemer and Percy is sneaky gossip monger, and the next they grow sentimental or helpful even though previous characterization would point otherwise. And with so many POVs, especially in first person, it is strange that it keeps shifting the motivations for each character. I wish the book would have just been told from Thalia's point of view.

I found this to be done in a distasteful way and did not complete, but feel that the little I read deserves a rating all the same. Many trigger warnings such as rape, violence and incest. Just not something worth reading.

Unfortunately this book wasn't for me. I have to echo the other reviewers in saying that all four of the POV voices were hard to differentiate (which wasn't helped by the poor formatting of the ARC, but was for the most part a fundamental issue with the writing). I can't speak to the asexual/demisexual/nonbinary rep. but I have seen that own voices reviewers were not impressed; I can, however, speak to the bisexual rep, and I found this cliched bordering on offensive. In this day and age do we still need to have bi people framed as flamboyant and promiscuous, expressing attraction to everyone with little care for other people's comfort? It's a stereotype I personally have seen far too much of and was hoping not to see here.

I didn't read far enough in (about 25%) to be able to comment on whether the intrigue ever gets off the ground - at the point I had enough it was mostly still petty bickering. Sorry, this one wasn't my cup of tea at all, which is a shame, because it sounded very good.

This read like any other book in this category. It wasn't a bad read and I might recommend it to friends who are fans of this genre.

When I read the synopsis I NEEDED this book! Theila in my mind was a character going after what she wanted and with that thought in mind she was willing to do whatever it took to get it. I wanted to love the thought i built up of this fictional character however reading the book was a let down. I guess I had built up her personality in my mind that when I actually started reading the book it didn’t meet my expectations for who I thought this character would be and what she accomplished. Is it the authors fault? Nope. But word of advice, keep an open mind when reading this..
I’ve read a lot of books and the story building in this one was great. Court intrigue, power hungry characters and elves it had me excited but again the story line didn’t pull me in like I thought it would. I am giving it a 3 star review.

while most of fantasy or court intrigue books can get boring this one made me laugh, made me warm, made me angry and made me all sorts of things with a pretty goo pace in its developing

i see other people cannot like that in a fantasy book a "modern language" is used but i think it was what made the book even better. it's fantasy, not a medieval historical book. when you create a world/universe, you can make them talk however you want.

i was hoping this was a part 1 but apparently is not! that's the only "bummer" here.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

Oh man. This book me a long time to get through because I’d read a few pages and then just get tired of it and put it to the side, but I felt the call in me tonight to just power through it and see how much I could get done in one sitting. Turns out, it didn’t actually take too long to read and I’m not entirely certain that’s a good thing.

There are many TW’s in this book, which have been mentioned before in other reviews so instead of repeating them I implore you to check out this review which has everything I could think of saying: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2643400217

The premise of the book sounded super interesting. Who doesn’t want to read about ancient magic, elves, royal political schemes. Unfortunately it just wasn’t delivered and didn’t live up to the imaginary hype I had in my brain when I requested this book on netgalley.

The characters just seemed so one dimensional that I couldn’t connect with them and we kept switching between them in a manner that wasn’t conducive to having a strong narrative from any POV. The mannerisms of the characters also seemed off, there’s just something icky and off putting, to me, about a YA using the term “daddy” to refer to a father. There was also the fact of ... incest. Yeah. I understand this is a fantasy novel, but I truly can’t be on board with incest being a main LI. It’s not even like they had the characters not know they were related (which while still ew, is less ew than what happened), the two characters grew up together and still were happy to knock boots and ... yeah.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.