City of Villains Book 1
by Estelle Laure
Disney Publishing Worldwide
You Like Them
Disney-Hyperion
Teens & YA
Pub Date 26 Jan 2021 | Archive Date 02 Feb 2021

This book was not for me. I found the writing to be lacking. I know it's written for Young Adults so it would be interesting to see if they enjoy it more than I did.
Thanks to Disney Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.
I cannot recommend this book.
1 star

if I had read this book in middle school or high school, I would have eaten it up. I really enjoyed the writing style. the characters were also interesting. mary elizabeth was a very relatable main character and the description is right that the villains were portrayed in a way they've never been before. honestly, though, I found the worldbuilding and plot to be extremely confusing. I couldn't quite keep up with all the different categories. but I do think a younger person would enjoy it.

I had so much fun reading this one. I love origin stories, and to read one about the Disney Villains? Sign me up! This book is set in a Gotham-style setting, where magic is now dead. There are those that are descended from magical families, and those that aren't. There is a lot of rivalry between these two groups, and when Mally goes missing, her friend Mary Elizabeth, an intern at the police department, is put on the investigation. Once Ursula, Mary Elizabeth's best friend, goes missing too, she really delves into the underbelly of the city, and who might want to see magic return.

This was a quick read, and I love Estelle Laure's writing style. I loved her other books too, and knew I was in for a treat with this one. It was a perfect cozy winter night read. I sped to the ending, and then realized I would have to wait for the next book. But it really was a blast seeing some of my favorite characters in a new context and as much younger versions of themselves. It was a simple book, but a great mystery. Can't wait to recommend this one!

This didn’t quite hit the mark for me. I love the idea of Disney meets Gotham, but something lacked in the actual story. There were holes in the story that I kept anticipating the author to fill. It’s labeled as book #1. When the second book is published I will read it in hopes of more of the story to be revealed.

Thank you to the publisher through Netgalley for an advanced copy.

this book was honestly so freaking bad. the writing was so completely terrible, and there was nothing good about it. and i feel like this book just needs a lot of work and just needed more planning. and i also wish there was more villains in here since i had no clue who anyone actually was

I was given this book by disney publishing and Netgalley in return for an honest review.

This book was a refreshing new take on our Disney villains. Magic has fallen and Mary, James, Ursula and Mal are teenagers just trying to survive without the magic they should have at legacies.

No one knows why magic fell but not they're starting to merge with the normal society and legacies are disappearing.

Twisty happenings, science, thirst for power and the birth of Villains happen between these pages. If that's what you're looking for in a read this is for you. Loosely based on the Disney characters you love is a Disney mystery.

The book is fast, there are twist but not anything you can't see coming. It's a good read though and I enjoy it. I would've mind seeing where this plot is going because there just has to be a follow up. Read it you won't hate it.

**Thank you to Netgalley and Disney Books for an eArc in exchange for an honest review. This in no way changed my rating**

In this first book of a series, we find Mary Elizabeth Heart, a girl who dreams of being a detective and helping others in her neighborhood after the brutal murder of her parents and sister. Mary Elizabeth is a "Legacy", the descendant of a family line that had magic. However, magic has been dead for years and after Legacy kids start to go missing, including Mary Elizabeth's best friend, she'll have to choose between her found family and her dream.

I'm going to be completely honest...this book was a wreck. It was so clumsily handled. It becomes very obvious early on the "Legacy" kids are an analog for minorities, specifically the Black community in modern day America. They live in an area of the city that once was beautiful but is now crumbling apart. Some of the "Narrow" kids (those born without magical descent) try to copy their style of dress and their heart birthmarks with tattoos. A history teacher mentions a march that happened in the past for better infrastructure in the Legacy area, the Scar, and one of the Narrow kids says something to the effect of "they cost the city of Monarch thousands and looted and stole!" Another says a politician character is "going to make Monarch great again!" It feels like the author is hitting the reader over the head with this in a book about the origin stories of the villains. The *villains* are stand-ins for Black people and are constantly written as being in opposition to or unwilling to talk with the police in a book not by a Black author. This is problematic, to say the least.

The way they become the villains we know and love was not super unique but I did think how we got there was new. The actual antagonist isn't as much of a surprise as they should be. This all said, it was a wreck the way that a bad movie can be really entertaining. I wasn't ever bored even though this book has a LOT of problems. It was really funny, though I think most of it was unintentionally so. My absolute favorite thing is that Gaston is a detective and the author decided he needed a first name, so he's now "Officer Tony Gaston" and it cracked me up every time I thought about it.

I think this book was amusing, but I would recommend the author think long and hard about how she proceeds with the series since she decided to make the "villains" analogs for Black people. I'm curious to see how it plays out.

⭐️⭐️/5 stars

If there’s anything I love in this world, it’s Disney and fairytale retellings. City of Villains combines both of those things into a story that reads like Once Upon a Time meets the Descendants. I really enjoyed reading all of the classic fairytale Easter eggs, and figuring out which character is the story would parallel which Disney character. The story centers around Mary Elizabeth, a high school “legacy” (descendent of magical lineage) living in a world with no magic. Her best friends, Ursula and James (Captain Hook), start suddenly getting wrapped up in all sorts of magical mystery, and it’s left to Mary to use her position as a police intern and partner to the kind and clever Bella to find out what is happening. The first half of the story was really interesting and I was getting pretty invested in the world building, but it really started to fall apart in the second half. There were a lot of times I found myself questioning the character motivations and wondering why they didn’t stop to question certain things, or why they would flip flop on their ideals so quickly. It just didn’t make a lot of sense at various points. It almost felt like it was just looking for ways to bring in classic Disney Easter eggs and lines without a lot of thought as to how that would actually fit in with the story. Overall, it was a pretty cute read, and I could easily recommend it to any classic Disney lovers, but overall I just didn’t quite get out of it what I was hoping.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Disney-Hyperion for sending me an ARC via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
3/5 stars.
I liked the premise of this story a lot, but I was left pretty confused while reading it. I also think the pacing was a bit off, and that made it hard to connect with the characters and the story.
We’ve got Mary Elizabeth, our narrator, who is a Legacy and lives in the Scar. She’s interning for the police, and she gets assigned the case of a missing Legacy girl that she goes to school with named Mally Saint.
Legacies are the children of people who had magic at one point. Magic is now gone, and the Legacies are divided into different belief groups about magic. There are also Narrows who don’t have magic at all, and they’re invading the Scar (the place most Legacies live) because it’s cheap and easy development. I think I got this explanation right, but there was a lot of info about these two groups, and I’m still a bit confused by them.
Shortly after Mally’s disappearance, Mary Elizabeth’s best friend, Ursula, goes missing too. Things start to get weird, magic could be back, and Mary Elizabeth and her partner Bella are investigating.
This is where I really got lost because I wasn’t finding many clues about what had happened, and things seemed to be happening for no reason. I did figure out “whodunnit” right before it was revealed, but it wasn’t fully explained in terms of motives.
Overall, this was an interesting take on villain origin stories (Maleficent, Ursula, and Captain Hook along with some appearances from others), but I was left confused and wanting more. It was a pretty short book, and it kind of just ended. It was a bit abrupt. I didn’t connect with the characters very much and the pacing felt off, but it was a decent read if you like these Disney villains.

I feel like this book could've been more like a novella, it really felt the whole purpose of it is to set up book 2. While that doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing, it is when so much is left unsaid. Character actions that were different but no real explanation as to why, character buildup that doesn't really go anywhere, and magic that gets suddenly revealed with no understanding or backstory. If you want me to read book 2, you've got to give me something!! I also felt like the book struggled to decide if it was a middle grade, young adult, or adult. High school student Mary Elizabeth Heart, along with her boyfriend, deal with the woes of high school and conflicting cliches --> Young Adult! Being handed a missing persons investigation case --> Adult! She's 17 and an intern but receives a big police case, does that happen? All that aside, it did have some high action parts and I LOVED the gotham atmosphere!

Thank you to Disney-Hyperion and NetGalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

As soon as I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. It was not for me. I was expecting something way more extravagant. I felt like this book was written for younger age group but with some of the language, it was definitely meant for an older age group.
Majority of the book was repetitive and down right boring. It took me 3 agonizing weeks to finish this book. I really wanted this book to be better.

Dnf at 2%
I realized that this book was not for me from the first page. It was very info-dumpy and I am still so confused on the world in this novel. I feel like the synopsis is misleading. I might try to pick this up some other time, but for now, I am taking a pass on this one.

Estelle Laure is one of my favorite writers of all time, and her talent does not waiver in this fantasy crime series. I'm excited to see where the series goes next.

This is what would happen if the CW had made a Descendants x Zootopia crossover, complete with characters written by someone that has never spoken to a teenager and enough cringeworthy dialogue to level a country.

It was just... so bad.

I typically try to find something positive to say in each of my reviews, even if I hated the book. However, I've been trying for longer then I care to admit and I can't come up with one positive thing. I disliked every aspect of this book.

The characters were were all either one dimensional or such bastardized, cartoonish reimaginings of their Disney counterparts that it's laughable. Or both. Quite a few of them fell into both categories, come to think of it.

Retellings are hard because you're working with characters that mean a lot to a lot of people and it can be hard to pull that off in a unique way that still maintains the character's original energy, and I acknowledge that. But this is the worst take on any of these characters I've ever seen.

(My only caveat to this is that Ursula had moments where she amused me, but those were few and far between and not nearly enough to save this.)


The writing style was juvenile, which might have been purposeful if it wasn't for the swearing and other decidedly not-juvenile content. As someone who loves YA, I'm aware that there are definitely different age ranges in YA. Some of it is going to read younger, and that's okay. But this book wasn't going for younger audiences and it really kept pulling me out of the story.


In a similar vein, the worldbuilding in this book? Nonexistent. They keep acting as if this is some other world with heroes and villains and magic, and then they reference Love Island or Michigan and you're just sitting there questioning what the heck is going on. It was extremely jarring. Blending fantasy and reality could have worked really well for this story, but it just... did not. At all.


I could keep going but I feel like the rest of this review would slowly devolve from coherent, logical complaints to incoherent anger and confusion on why the heck it was supposed to be a dramatic reveal that a character got their girlfriend's name tattooed on their arm. Or the transparent, garish, nearly tone-deaf way the author tried to incorporate current events. Or any of my million other problems with this story.

In the end, every book has its readers and I know this book is no different, but I feel like it's being marketed wrong. I can see a lot of people going into this (myself included) expecting something entirely different than this story is going to give.

I love disney and really love a good villain story but this was flat for me. Too much happening in the beginning (info dump) and too closely similar to things I've read (or watched) in the past.

I was so excited to read this- Disney is my JAM, and I will read anything and everything that is a spinoff or a take on it- especially villains. Sadly, this was not one of the ones that was very good. I felt like it tried too hard to be the Descendants, but it fell really flat. There was also WAY too much info-dumping right from the start, and my head started to hurt. I appreciate a good world building, but this was a little over-the-top.

I really enjoyed the first installment of this series. I found a few parts confusing, and some references to past events that were never really explained. I'm hoping that future books address the events more, but if not, I wish they would be added to this book. Especially since they are used as reasoning for some of the events that happen here. Overall, it is a great origin story for some of the famous Disney villains. I loved some of the explanations that the author created for famous characteristics of the villains, and the gritty feel of the city. I can't wait to read the next book!

I loved the idea of this book. This missed the mark completely. I’m not even sure who is intended to read this book. It feels YA but reads very middle grade. Not that there is anything wrong with that but I don’t think that was the intended market.

This was a so so read. I had higher expectations of it because I love Disney Villains but everything felt unfinished and like many reviewers have stated, the age group for this book seemed off.

I was interested in reading this because of the Disney aspect. However, I don’t think the world was developed well. It felt too simple. I think that more time and space could have been dedicated to world and character building.

I agree with other reviewers that this book doesn’t seem targeted to the right age group. I was expecting a middle grade for younger readers, but the characters are in high school. There’s a lot of teen content (kissing, drinking, flirting), but at the same time it didn’t feel like a book meant for teen YA readers because the characters are very juvenile.

The major plot points were also very predictable. Unfortunately, this book didn’t live up to my expectations.