Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinion was not affected by the free copy.

I'm sorry about this but I'm putting this on the DNF pile. I tried but now I feel like I'm forcing my way through, and that's never a good sign when it comes to books. The first book I thought was decent-- slow and laid-back as it was more about a personal journey than anything action-oriented. After getting about halfway through this book, I'm really starting to feel like Fable was meant to be a stand-alone or should have been left as one.

The first thirty percent or so of this book is dedicated to a certain setting and plotline that just ends. I don't know whether or not it will have any relevance in the overall story but it honestly doesn't feel like it will. If that thirty percent was cut or changed, I don't think the book would suffer. After it ends another plot started and that was where I stopped reading. Maybe this second plot will carry through the rest of the book or maybe it'll end, too, I don't know. To me, it felt like the author didn't have a solid plan for what to do after that cliffhanger ending of the first book. The other two novels I read from this author are stand-alones that take place in the same world, and maybe that's more to the author's strengths.

I think this duology either needed to stay as one book and just be a little longer, or things needed to be fleshed out more in order to justify it being a duology. Zola needed to be fleshed out more, as did Clove and his relationship with Fable; there needed to be more development of Fable and West's relationship whether that mean shipmates or lovers; more could have been explored with Fable's mother, as halfway through I still know very little about her.

I'm sure there are those who will love this book anyway, but for me there just wasn't enough to satisfy me.

**Disclaimer: I received a free early access copy of Namesake by Adrienne Young through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you to them and the publisher for this opportunity.

Namesake by Adrienne Young is a young adult fantasy novel set in a fictional world where our cast of characters live and die on the seas while trying to make their fortunes.  Fable learns about her history and tries to make a name for herself. It is set to be published on March 16th, 2021.  I rated it five stars on GoodReads.

Here's the summary from Goodreads:

Trader. Fighter. Survivor.
With the Marigold ship free of her father, Fable and its crew were set to start over. That freedom is short-lived when she becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. In order to get to her intended destination she must help him to secure a partnership with Holland, a powerful gem trader who is more than she seems.
As Fable descends deeper into a world of betrayal and deception she learns that her mother was keeping secrets, and those secrets are now putting the people Fable cares about in danger. If Fable is going to save them then she must risk everything, including the boy she loves and the home she has finally found.
Filled with action, emotion, and lyrical writing, New York Times bestselling author Adrienne Young returns with Namesake, the final book in the captivating Fable duology.

When I finished reading Fable, which I also read as an eARC (review found here), I knew I had to read Namesake.  It had a killer cliffhanger, and I just needed to know what was going to happen.  I fully was not disappointed with the events of this book.  This was an excellent conclusion to the duology, as you might be able to guess considering I rated it 5 stars.

Due to the fact that it is a sequel, I am going to keep my review somewhat vague.  I don't want to spoil the events of the first book.  You should definitely read Fable though.

Namesake picks up pretty much from where we left off.  I felt like not a lot happened in Fable, but that was not true for its sequel.  The story felt really action packed and I kept wondering where things were going.  I appreciated how eventful it was, while also being very well paced.  I wasn't overwhelmed, but the way it was written forced me to want to read it really quickly.


I loved the development of the characters and how we got to know more about Fable and her history.  I also liked learning more about the other characters on the Marigold.  There was a lot of complicated relationships whether it was within friendships, or family, or found family.  People were held accountable for their actions, but it showed how sometimes you can't just let people go.  

The ship in this book is not couple goals by any definition of the term, however, I found myself really swept up in the romance and the struggles as they fought to be together.  I wanted them to succeed, but found the strife very fascinating and engaging. 

The writing was beautiful, and I loved the chance to further explore the world.  It's a fascinating world, and I really enjoyed the imagery.  The descriptions were really well done.

Overall, I highly recommend this series, and you should definitely check it out if you haven't already.

This was a wonderful conclusion to a great duology! I loved all the characters and the high sea action. Highly recommend!

After reading the first book I was so so happy to receive the 2nd one! This is the perfect ending for all of the characters that I fell in love with. I always love books set at sea and this was no exception. I love Adriennes lyrical writing

Never have I wanted a sequel so bad. Fable ended on the craziest cliffhanger and in Namesake we're thrown right into the action without skipping a beat. There were so many twists and I went from being angry to sad to happy, back to angry and just so happy. It was so sweet to see how Fable's relationship with her father evolved.

Perfect conclusion to Fable! I do think it should have been one whole book, but I loved it just the same!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an ARC of Namesake in exchange for an honest review. I will be posting my review on Instagram closer to the release date.
This is the second and final book to Fable, the book starts exactly where the last book left off.
I did not love the first book, but when I saw their was the second available on Netgalley and that it was the conclusion to the story I felt I had to read it. I am really glad I gave this series a chance and finished the story. I loved the second book so much more than the first, I enjoyed Fables arc in this book compared to the last and I loved to see her relationship with her father more in this continuation.
I really enjoyed this book, everything at the end of this book feels complete and all loose ends are tied. There are also some really fun twists in this story that I did not expect.
This is a beautiful story about family, loss, forgiveness and personal growth. I loved reading Fables journey as she navigates not only the dangerous seas but her own personal growth.
I can’t wait to buy a physical copy to complete my bookshelf!

Fable learns more about her mother's side of the family in the second and final book in this fantasy adventure. There are no pirates in this world, but the traders and dredgers are just as cutthroat. Fable has been kidnapped so she’s back into survival mode and trying to figure out who to trust among her captors.

My favorite parts include the gems, the dives, and those covers!

I love that this scrappy character never gives up on her dreams of being with West and the Marigold crew, but she also has the ability to look beyond the now and fight for the future of everyone.

Thanks to #netgalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for an advanced copy.

Wow wow wow! Adrienne Young absolutely knocked it out of the park with this series. This book was a bittersweet and satisfying end to the duology. I am hoping that we may get some novellas or other tales from this unique and beautiful world!

Fable was in my top 10 list of books for 2020 (out of the 174 I read), so I was more than a little excited to read this ARC of Namesake before my preorder copy arrives in March!

This is hard to write without any spoilers for either book, so I'll be brief and vague: The story picks up right where the first book left off, and it's a thrilling and gorgeous journey of self-discovery, tween-friendly romance, and adventure. I loved this book so much, and would happily read another book set in this world (or anything else Adrienne Young writes). Perfect for middle school +.


THANK YOU to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC for review.

All Fable wants is to sale the seas on the Marigold with West. But after West’s nemesis Zola kidnaps her, Fable is once again fighting for her life and freedom. As Fable is dragged deeper into a complicated web of secrets, lies, and ruthless business bargains, freedom, and West, seem to grow farther and farther away.

Fable was a pleasant surprise in a year when I badly needed pleasant surprises. It was exciting, adventure-packed, and genuinely thrilling. I’ve read a fair number of books set on ships, but Fable kept the setting fresh and unique, in part by throwing in some really interesting scenes about deep sea diving. Fable too was a great protagonist. She’s tough, desperate, and willing to throw herself bodily after what she wants, no matter the (usually slim) odds of success.

So it’s kind of a shame that Namesake isn’t very good.

Fable is an exciting high seas adventure. Namesake is primarily set on land and mainly focuses on boring contract negotiations. Young tries to keep contract negotiations interesting by throwing in a whole heap of secret family secrets, double-crossings, and political manipulations up the wazoo. But at the end of the day, contract negotiations are really boring and hard to dress up as anything else. The family secrets, double-crossings, etc. don’t add complexity; they add a lot of confusion.

Perhaps the real issue is the lack of tension that is inherent with boring contract negotiations. But obviously a YA fantasy novel needs tension, which means Young has to inject it in forcibly whether the actual plot points call for tension or not. So we get lots of
“Your mother was actually the second cousin of THIS important person!”
and
“I have a secret plan to betray my enemy, but I won’t explain it to the reader even though that means the next five chapters won’t make any sense!”
and
“You have presented me with a perfectly reasonably business proposal, but I REJECT it because otherwise this chapter will end six pages too early!”
and
“I am suddenly doubtful of my relationship to this person, but I will recover from those doubts next chapter with no explanation, and then unrecover the following chapter!”

The end result is a confusing, muddled mess with not a lot of character consistency or plot continuity. A lot of drama is shoved in for shock value, because the basic plot itself is dull and doesn’t provide shock or tension.

Which is such a shame, because Young is a talented writer with a skill for writing tense action scenes. Fable fleeing for her life from Jeval in the first book? Had me on the edge of my seat, got me immediately invested in this character and how the hell she was going to get out of that plot tangle. Young can write good YA fantasy. She just hasn’t here.

I adored this book!
It was such a fun read with lots of adventure and I mean who doesn’t love Pirates?
But now I’m sad because I need more Fable and West!

I loved this book, it was the perfect second half of the duology. I honestly thought it was even better than the first book, I could not put it down, I read the entire book in a day and I absolutely loved the ending. The ending really tied up all of the loose ends and was a very satisfying conclusion.

This is a duology I’d love to see grow into more books!

I enjoyed Fable but Namesake really got into a groove with its action and adventurous pacing. I loved the direction this story took and the setting is just as transportive and exciting as the first.

As much as I love Fable and West, I loved how Fable’s relationship developed with her father Saint even more. It’s very plot heavy so these bits of character development were much appreciated.

Namesake is the sequel to Fable and what a read it was. It was emotional, and very well written. This duology is now one of my favorites. Highly recommend to anyone for their next read!

wow.

she did it again. i started crying towards the end and it wasn't even because it was sad, just because it was ending. this duology has such a special place in my heart, even though I don't really know what it is about it that makes it so special. A full review will be up on my blog in a week!

but I'm still in shock over the fact that this series is over.

This duology is just so lovely.

The writing is absolutely gorgeous. It was easy to imagine myself adventuring with Fable and the Marigold crew.

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first, but it was still great. I missed the Marigold crew so much in the first half.

Overall this was a great read though and I highly recommend.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc. I got to tell you I think I liked this book better than the first. It expanded on the world so much more and I really enjoyed meeting the new characters. One thing I was a bit disappointed with was there were parts that just left me wanting more. Like it is beautifully written but the story felt a little rushed at times. But overall i throughly enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to getting my hands on a physical copy.

I think I’m just not the right audience for this authors work. I thought this would be better than fable, but it’s just not for me. I find these books to be boring & the romance is just too unbelievable. There is no chemistry!

My review will be available on my blog closer to release date.

When I read Fable last year I really enjoyed it. The book was very good, and the parts of it I liked, I really liked. Even the parts that I wasn’t as wild about, I enjoyed. I was really excited therefore when I got the chance to read Namesake before it was published. I was quite excited to get back to this world, because it was left on a bit of a cliffhanger, and I wondered what was going to happen in the next book and how many of the loose ends would be wrapped up. I feel overall that this book was an extremely satisfying conclusion to the first book.

In this book Fable is a “captive” of Zola. And from there things 100% absolutely do not get better for Fable. They only get worse. And while in another book this might feel contrived, in this one I liked it. I think that how Fable gets from point a to point b to point c is done very successfully in this book. The plot of this book focuses on Fable and her ambitions and family. One thing that continued through from the first book to this, is the underlying message of family, and what family means.

Much of the book had the tone of family is not just blood, but is the people that you meet along the way. There were other parts too, that stood out. It didn’t feel like Young was beating you over the head with it either. Family was a huge plot point in this book, and I’m afraid to go in depth about it because so much of it is better read and not spoiled. Suffice to say, I think the plot of this book was exemplary.

Partially, I think, because the plot revolves around the characters. Fable’s character arc is much of what pushes the plot forward. Fable generally, is the main character in this book. There are other characters that appear from the previous book, but they don’t nearly play the part they had. Auster and Paj make an appearance, but they have very limited page time. Even Willa isn’t in it as much. The only other character that really I think almost matches Fable is West.

We have quite a few new characters in this one, Clove and Holland who take up page time. I loved Clove. I loved Fable and Clove’s interactions throughout the book. And Holland was an interesting antagonist.

Saint of course was back in this, but much like the first he didn’t play a huge roll. He was in it, but wasn’t like West or Fable. Speaking of West and Fable I want to talk a bit about the relationship. While it felt a little insta-love like in the first book (I don’t mind that) in this one they are a bit more settled. I appreciate that Young at some points had them talk some issues out. West and Fable’s relationship is an interesting point in the book, and Young was successful in depicting it.

I will say there was one part of the plot that felt contrived. I didn’t love that part, but overall, I felt it didn’t detract too much from the book.

This book, much like the first, maybe even more so, was absolutely action packed. We jump from one event to the next with very little downtime. You’re always wondering what is coming next because Young does such an excellent job with the pacing in this book. Some parts of it could be boring, but they are most definitely not. I was engrossed from beginning to end, and I really enjoyed every moment that I was reading the book. To that point, Young is a great writer, and I was sucked in by her writing style and the cadence of it. I felt that it was stupendous. I was drawn into this world she crafted and I didn’t want to leave it.

This is (if you’re worried) a great wrap up. I felt it was a satisfying ending and I was overall happy with it. I’d take a novella now – something more than the epilogue. I would love to see some of the other character’s stories as well.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book and it was fantastic. What a great ending to the duology!