I didn't enjoy this read.  It was hard to keep track of the timeline times.  The "I can't remember" got old.

A sweet and romantic fairytale retelling wth two people having to fight for their love and happiness.

I know what you're thinking, another fairy tale retelling? And honestly, I'm thinking the same thing. This one, however, is a bit different than the others I've read, though it wasn't my new favourite. It was an okay read, one that I had trouble getting into fully, and that's why I only gave it two stars.

Following two people, Kathryn, in a few years past Canada, and Jacob, in a few years in the 1800's in Germany, we get to learn their two stories. Kathryn, not abused but simply neglected by her too busy parents, going to school and finding herself after their death, and eventually finding a romance for herself in Jake, a professor at her university. And Jacob, after losing his first love, trying to find himself again despite a curse a witch has placed on him, causing him to lose love after love until he finds the true love of his life, however many years that may take, and when he deserves it. 

I had a really hard time getting into this book. I don't know why, because it goes through all of the fairy tales I enjoyed as a kid, but it just was kind of boring for me. The way that things were described kind of made me think they weren't a big deal, when thinking back on them, they were a huge deal in the book. Everything seemed kind of flippant, and by the end of them, I feel like I didn't connect with the characters. And that's really the biggest problem I had with this book. It just wasn't for me. 

Overall, I think if you're looking for a fresh take on a romance novel full of fairy tale retellings, than maybe you might like this one more than I did. 

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I really wanted to love this book. The cover art is beautiful and the synopsis had me hooked. Unfortunately, the book fell flat for me. There were too many unnecessary details (I think peppermint tea was mentioned in every single chapter) and not enough character development. I don't feel like I connected with either one of the main characters. The idea was great and I think if it was edited it could be a really great story. I received a free copy from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

1.5 stars

I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

I was REALLY excited for this novel and the description sounded AMAZING and then.....I am only giving it 1.5 stars because I actually took the time to finish the novel.

Spoilers off and on throughout this review, so you have been warned!

First, the novel is not really great with explaining what the age of the main characters are. When we start with Jacob's story he is maybe late teens, no real confirmation. However, when we start Kathryn's story with how she is acting, speaking, and re-acting to her parents going away for a month she absolutely sounds like an immature 16 or 17 year old. A little further on all of the sudden we are told that she is more like 22-ish and beginning her PhD?!??! Ummm, huh? She doesn't talk like it, she doesn't think like it and she sure as shit does not ACT like she is a college graduate about to start a PhD program. I mean, a family emergency occurred and her family is discussing who is going to "take care of Kathryn," what college graduate adult needs to be taken care of?!?!? Maybe it's just this generation who does not know how to adult...so let's write a book that mirrors that.

Second, I really do like retellings of fairy tales and so forth, however, this novel was trying to apparently retell EVERY fairy tale every written and in doing so the execution was HORRENDOUS. The flow was so choppy and disjointed, some of the stories mineaswell have been copy written and seemed so blatantly unoriginal it was boring. This is also advertised as a YA novel, however, the characters are a bit older which may make it fall into the New Age category, except the writing was so juvenile and simplistically written that one would think this was a young readers novel. Terribly disappointing and the editing errors were off the charts! This may be due to the fact that I had an advanced copy, however, some of those edits were so bad that it seemed like a first draft rather than a review draft.

Third, we have already discussed the lack of maturity of our character Kathryn, which does NOT seem to improve throughout the novel and we are covering like 5-7 years of her life. Even by the end of the novel she sounds like an ignorant, naive moron NOT someone who has supposedly JUST completed a bloody PhD. Incidently, what the hell is her PhD in? And she's talking about applying for jobs, but what kind of jobs?! All we know is she is writing a dissertation on Grimm's fairy tales and her inappropriate FIVE YEAR weird off and on relationship with her professor. Ugh. Back to the characters, Jacob has proven throughout the ENTIRE novel what a narcissitic, selfish asshole he is because he needs to find and SHARE real love to break his curse so he constantly finds a woman and thinks, "she'll do," and then expects it to break his curse?!?!?! One minute he is telling a woman that he doesn't want to get married, then says all right let's get married, then treats her like utter shit and moves on to the next one! That one he is like, meh maybe she'll break my curse and then he is lamenting terribly that he has lost the love of his life! In fact, he says that A LOT throughout the novel, she was the one......except you didn't really care about her and were only thinking of breaking your own damn curse.

Fourth, I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but some of the redundancy in the novel was so frustrating that I began to get physically angry. For example, in E V E R Y damn chapter it is CONSTANTLY brought up about the fucking peppermint tea. Did you know they love peppermint tea? What?!?! Really?! Did you know that every damn chapter MENTIONED peppermint tea?! To the point that I was at the grocery store last night, in the tea aisle and I saw peppermint tea on the shelf and I got ANNOYED! I got annoyed with tea sitting on a shelf because of this stupid novel!

Fifth, this extremely long novel had so much extra filler type information that was so not necessary. If you asked me to tell you about the author right now, I really couldn't tell you anything about her....oh, except her favorite novels and the authors she apparently GUSHES over because yes...that information was unnecessarily in this far too long novel. There were so many parts that had so much unnecessary specifics and details about everything except the actual story and something I cared about. Like hey, do you want me to give you examples of how much they loved and craved and slurped down their PEPPERMINT TEA!!!!!!! Seriously, makes me never want to even clearly SEE peppermint tea on the shelf any longer. This novel was so damn long it was almost like being with someone who talks a lot, but never really says anything. With that logic, let's not ACTUALLY finish the story, eh?! Oh yes my friends, there is at least going to be a sequel (WHY PUBLISHERS?! WHY?!?!?!?!?!? THIS IS RIGHT SHIT!!!!) if not more so...fair warning on THAT one. I for one will be staying FAR away from that trash-tacular sequel, if not every other thing this author ever writes again. I don't know if she is in dire need of an editor that tells her the truth or just read some good books and see how bad this one is, but something has got to change.

Oh, did you know that the characters LOVE peppermint tea?! Oh you didn't? I'm so glad I could share that with you!

But hey, let's end on a positive, right? This cover is spectacular and gorgeous and whomever did the art for it should be highly commended. I absolutely judge a book by it's cover, I am a visual person who likes pretty, shiny things and this immediately caught my eye, and this cover is spectacular so bravo to the artist. Maybe they were drinking peppermint tea while working on it.....

The idea behind this story was really interesting, a Grimm brother and his quest to obtain and share fairytales, a curse that almost felt like beauty and the beast, and a love that transcends time, but unfortunately the execution of this book was not at all what I was hoping for.

The writing was in desperate need of editing- I did read an ARC copy so keep in mind that could be part of the problem and maybe the issues were fixed before publishing- but the story jumped around in a nonlinear fashion (and no I am not talking about the time changes between chapters but within a same timeline chapter), strange word choices were used that made the sentence/paragraphs make no sense, and gave a ton of misinformation (for example one page said a character was a certain age and then a few pages later his age was stated as something else, one page said he did not love a character and a page later he is lamenting the loss of his true love- and this is just a few of many examples).

I also could not connect or care about either main character- Jacob was cold and detached most of the time (even when I think he was supposed to be charming and caring) and only cared about himself in basically every situation. Kathryn was a grad student who acted like a very young teen instead of a capable adult, and instead of getting to know her emotionally the author would go into tangents of why she followed certain (real life) authors on social media and the benefits of following authors, and other super random overly detailed tidbits that distracted from the story and did not help me connect to the character.

If I was capable of DNF a book, this would be a DNF for me. Instead I trudged through, got to the tedious end and discovered this is a series- one I will not be continuing. Keep in mind you may really like this book, this is just my opinion based on a digital arc copy. On the plus side, the cover is gorgeous

I wanted to like this, but the writing was super choppy and basic and I quickly figured out this book wasn't for me.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this ebook.

⭐️💫 1.5/5 Stars
💗Clean Romance

Let’s start off with this cover, isn’t it a beauty?! Then I read the description; fairytales, time traveling, magical curses, and a love story. I was so excited to dive right into the magic of it all.

Unfortunately, this didn’t live up to my hopes for it. In fact, I almost walked away from it many times. This book is a show-er, not a teller; there is very little dialogue and what little there is feels stiff and unnatural. The beginning half is very confusing, it clumsily bounces around between different POV and timelines, none of which seem to go together or make sense. Things do get a bit better about half way through, when timelines start to coincide. This book also seemed to overly describe scenes that in the end had very little effect on the story, yet there were so many loose threads and far reaching jumps for some vital parts. And then there was the ending... Kathryn spent the last 1/3 of the book struggling with the internal feeling that she shouldn’t trust Jacob and that things were off, yet at the end she magically knew she “loved him all along”. I loved the idea behind this story but the execution of it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you netgallery and the author for providing me an arc in exchange for an honest review. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. The summary, description and cover all sound looked amazing but It just didn't not live up to my expectations. I had a hard time connecting to the story and the characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for this eArc in exchange of an honest review. 

When I read the synopsis of this book, I fell in love. It kind of reminded me of my favorite kdrama "Goblin", so I requested it. Unfortunately, I dnf'ed it. I didn't like the writing style and I was confused at the beginning. I just never felt the romance between the main characters, maybe it was my mood but the feels just weren´t there. I thought there were going to be more scenes set in the present but no. Also, the eArc format kind of scrambled some sentences when I read this on my kindle.

This book was not really for me and I ended up DNFing it around 18 percent. While the cover was stunning, It was a little bit too confusing for me with the multiple perspectives/timelines and therefore I could not finish it. I would however like to thank netgallery and the author for providing me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I tried to read this book. I finished it. It was just ok. It did not grab my heart with its plot like other books, too basic for me. 3.5 stars for me. It needed mire character development and stringer storyline. Things were too rushed for me sometimes.

I really enjoyed the description of the book but sadly it didn't live up to the hype. I enjoyed how it read like a fairytale but it just didn't feel original and it was kind dpof confusing to read.

This book did not work for me. It felt very choppy and rush, and I was so bogged down reading endless descriptions that didn't mean anything to the story. I enjoy descriptions that help me to visualize what is happening in the story, but I kept getting all these visuals that seemed to mean nothing to the plot. It was a bit exhausting to read.  I do absolutely love the cover though!

I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

Not my sort of book. Had a lot of the tropes I like but unfortunately the romance just didn't do it for me.

I wanted to love this plot, but it was a dozen or so chapters until we got to the main plot and it proceed to move at a glacial pace for me. The characters were interesting and the plot was unique but it took me forever to finish this book because I knew it wasn't going to resolved anytime soon.

I read the synopsis to this and so badly wanted to love it. All the things that interest me seemed perfectly rolled up in this book. I picked it up and had re read pages multiple times as my thoughts drifted. I liked the idea of 2 timelines but they in no way seemed cohesive. I just couldn't get into this book at all. I DNF at 25%

This was a ok book. Nothing that wow me, but it was nice. 
It has that fairy tale vibe, and it reminded me at a Beauty and the Best. It is a sin off. 
It was something different.
3 stars.

This was a beautiful tale inspired by the old Grim Fairy Tales. The setting although standard was beautifully described and I enjoyed reading the plot and the characters. A really great debut novel!

Dnf @ 24% 

I really hate dnfing books especially ones I get for review but I just couldn’t keep going. This had a really good premise but the execution was just not there. The insta love was not done well and there is a trigger warning for suicide. I didn’t like how that was handled. This was just not for me