I love a fantasy that has some kind of focus on royalty and this one did not disappoint. I found that aspect of the book particularly interesting, as well as the relationship between mother and daughter.

Is this a weird YA fantasy or satire?

The writing was really good. The voice was on-point for a YA fantasy.

The story though, not my cup of tea.

It seems this book still hasn't been published although the official pub date was 08 Oct 2020.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review. This was a good book and had great chapter titles. I was left with some questions, but as this is the first book in the series, I'm sure those questions will be answered in future books.

This book got archived before I could download it, so I got it on kindle unlimited.

The prologue and the blurb of this book promised so much more and different than what we end up receiving.

The story had no flow, the worldbuilding was non-existent and frankly most of the time .I had a hard time following what was happaning with all the jumps from scene to scene.
The characters lacked personality and I had a hard time relating or rooting for anyone.

The chapter titles were so creative though, I just loved the concept but I kind of feel that the book needs so much editing that the chapter titles stole the show.

Also for me it is a major trigger when a girl says she isn't like other girls.

Sadly the book had so many issues that I gave up on it at the 30-40% mark.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I admit in my joy at joining NetGalley I may have been overzealous in my requesting numbers. As this book has already been published, I am choosing to work on the current upcoming publish date books in my que. As I complete those I will work on my backlogged request and will provide a review at that time. I again send my sincere thanks and apologies.

I had my eye on this book for a while. The plot was face paced and the characters are interesting. It kept me turning the page and wondering what was going to happen next.

The story lacks any clear direction, which made this book really underwhelming. Kilco is just rude without a reason. I knew it was doomed the second Kilco said she wasn't like the other girls.

The book started out promising enough. I loved the cover; the description sounded interesting and once I started reading the prologue I thought, hey, this book is great and promising!
And then came the first chapter... First things first - I like a book that challanges its readers. I love good word building, little hints and clues to be picked up throughout the book and to follow, which keep the writing fresh and entertaining and challange the reader. I also love chapter titles - especially if they actually have a meaning to the chapter and using different phobias as chapter titles is so brilliant that I simply have to give this book a star for that idea alone.
But sadly, it's not going to be more than two stars for this book. Everything that was interested about this book it ruined by its absolutly ridiculous, inconsistent jumps in scenery. There was almost no coherence after the prologue and I read a book that used to do those untimely jumps before and I did not like it. It's a shame really because I think this book has high potential, but if I am unable to follow the scenery, what's the point of reading the book?
I am still rating this book two stars, though. One star for the chapter titles and their creative use and one for the prologue. The prologue made Kira my favourite character and I was really looking forward to this book. But the style this book is written in is simply not for me. It's tiresome and I don't want to read a book that exhausts me.

I received a free ARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Actual Rating 1.5 stars
I found this book to have little to no word building. The story lacked structure and was difficult to follow. The author never really gave much info and I found myself not caring what happened to the characters.

The book I was expecting from the synopsis is not the one I got. This book is in serious need of some editing. There were words misplaced, spelling errors and the story jumped around a lot. I felt like there was no clear separation of scenes and at times I felt like I had missed out on large chunks of story as the story jumped ahead without explanation.

I will definitely not be following up with this series as I found it dull, poorly executed and uninspired. On a positive note I found the cover to be beautiful.

This is the first book of the series, and it packs quite a lot in!

Our female character is Kilco Escamilla, a young, but terrifying woman, who is taking after her mother, Kira, to become a doctor. Called by royalty to leave their home, they travel to the neighbouring kingdom to become the Royal Physician. As they are at war though, things aren’t as easy as they may seem.

Kilco meets both The Shield, and Ilya, an assassin. Both of these relationships develop into friendships, and get really quite complicated, as does the situations they find themselves in.

It’s a very complex book emotionally, it’s very fast paced, and it left me quite exhausted emotionally sometimes!

I thought it ended quite abruptly (for me anyway), but it is the first book so that’s ok, I imagine the next one will more or less follow straight on.

My thanks to Netgalley and Andraharts Publications, LLC for the copy

The writing is slow and takes a while to get into. It is the first book in a series and may just need some time to get going. Worth a look, but a little hard to get through. If you want a fast pace, If you don't mind a slow start with an interesting voice, give it a try.

I couldn’t get into this at all, the world building wasn’t good at all, it was confusing and felt flat, this book just wasn’t for me

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Unfortunately I struggled with this book from the start and although there seems to be many high ratings for this book it just was not for me. I found it jumped from one thing to another and not enough background to understand what was going on. Kilco was super annoying which I think was how she was meant to come across but still didn’t make me want to see her differently.
I think that the world the story is built in has a lot of potential but there was just not enough for me to want to take my time reading it. I think that I did skim about a quarter of the book so I could finish it which may have led to me missing something significant but I just didn’t care enough.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review

DNF’ed.
I think I knew it after the first chapter that I wasn’t going to finish this.
It’s super confusing. There is no world-building, and it felt like the writing was all over the places. Jumpy and without logic (or I dare say editing?).

I didn’t feel for the character or understand enough what was going on and so I moved on.

Thank you anyway for the e-ARC.

Not my thing but I believe other people cold love it! I appreciate the world building it just left be wanting a little more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andraharts Publications for providing me an ARC of this book.

This was a DNF for me, which is super rare. I found the world very difficult to get into, and readers are just thrown into the story with no explanation of what is what. Personally, I like stories that have much more world-building. This one felt like I was supposed to know everything already, so much of the time I felt lost, or like I was missing something important. The plot synopsis on NetGalley was also a bit misleading.

The narrative also was very jumpy. Often there were no transitions between scenes or conversations, which made the dialogue hard to follow. On top of that, I found it hard to relate to the main character, Kilco. While it can be interesting when you don’t particularly like the main protagonist, it’s very hard to commit to a story when the protagonist is unrelatable to the reader.

The premise is good, and the setting has promise, but it seemed that there were too many moving parts at work to make something cohesive. I don’t think the story itself was the issue for me, but the storytelling was off-putting. I did think the chapter titles were clever. There are great fantasy elements that I think many people would enjoy, however, this was just not my cup of tea.

Remnants of Atonement follows Kilco’s new life assisting in a war camp, there she makes new friends and enemies.

The book is really hard to get into, it was confusing because there is hardly any world building and so for the first half of the book, I did not know what was happening or the relevance of it. The writing style and the dialogue was a bit weird for me, the setting makes it seem like the book is a historical fiction and yet the dialogue is modern. I did like the main and side characters especially Kilco and her humour and her mum, but I found it hard to connect to the characters because I just did not understand what was going on. The relationship between the 3 main characters is awkward and a bit weird but I understand that it is meant to be, the characters are younger than I thought and I think there is an age gap between Kilco/Ilya and Pogue which I did not like as they are love interests, honestly the scene with Kilco was really uncomfortable and it was never addressed again regarding the comments she made about how she should feel during sex. The second half of the book is better and more structured, but the book lacks an overall plot, things occur but I do not know what the plot/purpose of the story actually is.

No one really liked the main character, I think that made it hard for me to connect to the story and the relationships she forms. However, the story itself is interesting and I enjoyed the concept of it.

2/5

Thank you, Netgalley for sending this to me for review. This is no way influences my thoughts or feelings.

2/5 Stars

I have many thoughts and feelings about this book. So I'm just going to break it down by the CAWPILE rating system and explain them categorically.

Characters: I didn't enjoy any of the characters. They were abrasive and very flat with what felt like no development the whole story. Also, they were moments where they were so hypocritical and I didn't understand the main character at all and it made it very hard to get through the book.

Atmosphere: There is little to no world-building to be found. You are immediately thrown in and some books can pull that off well but I was just so confused for the first quarter of the book.

Writing: Unfortunately, not everyone can afford or has the ability to obtain an editor to read over their book. I hate to take off points for that but it was glaringly obvious when the wrong words were used, words weren't properly separated, and the formatting was off. Again, that's not something I can really fault the author for too much because, as I said, an editor is expensive and it would be very classist of me to say that the author should've had someone read over this before releasing it to the public.

Plot: The synopsis was nothing like the book. Actually, the synopsis says something happens that doesn't happen at all, so I would take it with a grain of salt if you ever did read the summary. I truly couldn't tell you the point of this book. We were constantly going down different paths and avenues and then the ending was so abrupt that it didn't feel like a natural segway into a sequel.

Intrigue: There were definitely points that could be developed in the future but I don't see myself continuing on with the series to see those flourish.

Logic: Again, the characters would say one thing and completely go against their own actions. I didn't understand any of the emotions or thoughts of any of the characters.

Enjoyment: So with all the issues I had with the other categories in this review it was hard for me to get through and I found myself skimming towards the end because I just wanted to be done. I won't be continuing with the series. However, I do wish the best to the author and I hope that others do find things they enjoy from this

I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

DNF

I ended up putting this book down just before the halfway mark (40% according to my kindle). This book was very slow to begin and jumps around quite a bit. There were times when the story skipped severely enough that I thought I might be missing whole chunks of the book.

The author excelled at worldbuilding and their characters' personalities were well-rounded and overall likable. But after the first 40% of the book, it still felt like it was meandering. I couldn't catch on to any one plotline since the scenes skipped so sporadically. I felt like I was being fed random bits of information on the world and the characters with no real endpoint in mind.

This was a DNF for me at 20%. I lost interest because the narrative kept jumping around in a rather jarring way. I'm not sure if this is a product of this being an early draft, but a lot of the paragraphs ran together in my copy. This sometimes made it difficult to know who was speaking. Additionally, there were a lot of really random page breaks that didn't make sense.

I did like the characters, and I thought the world building had a lot of potential; however, I read spoilers that there was a graphic scene, and I did not wish to continue. I would highly recommend that the publisher include a warning if there is a graphic depiction of sexual assault.