Twin Crowns had me hooked just by the synopsis alone. Twin sisters separated by birth, pitted against each other? Magic, intrigue, royalty? All the good things wrapped into one!

While I enjoyed both Wren and Rose separately, I fell in love with the story once they finally met and became true sisters. The romance in the story was squeal-worthy but the relationship between these two sisters really solidified my decision about this book.

I'm excited to get my hands on the next book because I need more from Wren and Rose! Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

A common complaint I have about ebooks (and even ordering physical books online) instead of going to a physical bookstore and being able to flip through a book before you buy it is you are strictly relying on the blurb/synopsis when you go to buy it. In essence, you’re trusting whoever the publisher hires to write the blurb/synopsis to be honest with you about what you’re getting when you buy a book without being able to flip through it and get a feel for it on your own.

This book deeply disappointed me. What reeled me into wanting to read it was the term “rom-com”. This book is no more rom-com than any other YA fantasy romance out there. As a matter of fact, it’s less funny than every Sarah J. Maas book I’ve ever read. That I’m absolutely sure of. It’s just a plain and simple fact: this is just another YA fantasy romance duology that’s too long at even one book, so I can only imagine it’s going to be far too long for two books.

I don’t know how others will feel, but the best character in this whole book is Shen, and even he is just the Dread Pirate Westley but a witch. Even some of the dialogue feels familiar, if not outright almost word-for-word. You can call it a homage. I just called it entertaining and left it at that because there was so much filler in this book it suffered from incredibly uneven pacing.

I won’t be reading the second half of this series, but I wish the authors luck. A lot of people seem to have liked this book, but I wasn’t one of them.

Thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins Children’s Books, and Balzer & Bray for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. As per personal policy, this review will not appear on social media or bookseller websites due to a 3 star or lower rating.

Rose Valhart is the crowned princess to the throne of Eana. Wren Greenrock is an enchanted witch. Though they are twin sisters, Rose and Wren were separated at birth and have never met until now. Wren has trained for the day when she would switch places with her royal sister and steal her crown to avenge their parents’ deaths. Living like her royal sister seems like a dream, but Wren quickly learns that palace life is harder than she ever expected, especially with her reckless magic and a distractingly handsome guard. And Rose, though she was raised to fear the world outside of her palace’s walls, begins to question everything as she tastes freedom and befriends witches she was told to fear. Both girls must navigate their unfamiliar worlds, but there is a bigger danger than just unfamiliarity lurking as coronation day looms near.

I could not stop reading this book! From page one, I was hooked. One of my favorite aspects about this book is that we switch between Rose and Wren’s POV every chapter. This not only kept the momentum of the story going (and left you with cliffhangers that you just needed answers to), but it really highlighted their differences and similarities. Rose was raised prim and proper and has never had to rough it, but her determination and strength from having to be the perfect princess, helps her survive in Wren’s wild world. Wren wasn’t raised with such grace, but her wits prove useful in the games of palace life and her powers keep her safe when danger threatens her life. I really enjoyed that both girls seemed to have the same strength and sharpness at the core of their characters. It highlighted the bond between them. And though they developed these characteristics in different ways, they are still able to bend into each other’s roles (especially, when it comes to the love interests!). For fans of fantasy, rom-coms, Sarah J. Maas, and amazing female leads, get your hands on Twin Crowns for an epic read!

Twin Crowns was such a delightful fantasy that I absolutely devoured. It's fun (and funny), but also a really great fantasy story. And look, perhaps it isn't particularly groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it, I was thoroughly entertained, and frankly, that is all that matters. Especially to me.

I loved the characters, and found them to be really well-developed, even the more minor characters. Wren and Rose were separated at birth, Rose not even knowing that she had a sister until after she's been kidnapped. Wren, however, has always known that her role is to take Rose's place as queen. Both girls are absolutely delightful, in their own, very different ways. And I also loved their romantic interests, too. I won't say too much about that, because it's more fun to figure out who is in love with who on your own, yeah?

There's magic, a wonderful coven of witches waiting for their chance to return to the world, and a lot of antics that will really endear you to both Wren and Rose. And really, the story is just plain entertaining. I flew through it, definitely invested in Wren and Rose's stories, as well as their relationships. Sure, some things were predictable, but it didn't particularly bother me while reading.

I absolutely look forward to reading the next installment of this series, which was both great fun and super easy to read!

Bottom Line: It's fun, it's swoony, and it's just plain delightful!

Thank you @netgalley and @harpercollins @harperkids for the eARC to read and review!

Twin Crowns is such a fast, fun YA read! It has action, romance, mystery, witches and royals! What more could you ask for? I really loved Wren's character from the beginning, and was rooting for her the whole time. Her growing, tension-filled relationship with Tor was amazing and I literally cannot wait to see where that goes in the future!! I loved Rose's growth in this story, and her learning her true history and really coming into herself was brilliant to see! Her developing relationship with Shen is adorable and her friendship with Celeste is awesome! Rathborne worked as a villain for this book, though I am much more excited to see where having the main villain be King Aldrik will take us in the future! All in all, a very enjoyable read, with great characters and relationships, I can't wait for more!!

Twins separated at birth, romances with guards/warriors, and all of the political intrigue! This was such a good read, and I honestly loved the characters and story so much. But first of all, I just want to say that it was so well written. The writers juggled so many different characters and points of view, and the story still unfurled in such a beautiful way. None of the new information about a fantasy series that can get to cluttered up was over the top or heavy handed, but came about naturally. Building the different personalities of the characters wasn’t awkward, but came with ease. I loved the seamlessness of this story.

Next, how are all of these characters so different and likable?! The romantic male leads so different— Shen being sort of sarcastic and funny, Tor being intense but curious and passionate… the twins being so different— Rose both naive but regal and comes into her own to be so strong, Wren a lot less calculating that I expected, instead she takes unnecessary risks and is impulsive and often rash. Not to mention Celeste, who is smart and strong and brave… and Banba a strong old lady with a ton of power, and Thea… ah! Each character is so distinct and well crafted. In any case, this book was very well done and I am looking forward to whatever comes next!!

Thank you to NetGalley provided by HarperCollins Children's Books for this eArc! You will find my unbiased review below.

Twin sisters, Rose and Wren, are separated at birth. Rose is raised in a Kingdom where being a witch is a death sentence. She is set to become Queen in a month on her eighteenth birthday and does not know she has a twin sister. Wren is a witch and was raised by witches. She knows she has a twin and has a mission to take her sisters’s place and become the Queen.

Wren and her friend Shen kidnaps Rose so Wren can take her place. During this time Rose is discovering truths about herself and the history of the lands while Wren is stuck with pretending to be her sister who is opposite of herself. There she finds herself surprised by some of the plans in place while trying to kill the man who is temporary ruler and has a part in damning the witches.

This book was highly entertaining! It is a light read that doesn’t have too complex of a magic system or world building. The information being provided about the history was easily digestible! I enjoyed all the banter between Rose and Shen! Probably my favorite and seeing Rose learn about who she is made me excited once I got to her chapters. Wren, I was a little more bored up until mid way in the book when things starts to get more interesting for her. It is a Rom-Com Fantasy so there are moments where I’m like- did that really just happen? But remember the genre and it fits. I truly enjoyed it and definitely seems as if there will be a second one which I will read! Would recommend this to someone since I read it in one day and wasn’t bored at all while reading.

Review posted on Good Reads, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Rating: 3.5 rounded to 4.

This fantasy kept me on the edge of my seat constantly. I love the aspect of the twin princesses being separated at birth, and think it was handled really well through the story. It was very unique to have one princess be raised as the crown princess while the other who was taken was raised to kidnap her sister and steal the crown to avenge her parents' murders.

The imagery was wonderfully done, and I felt as though I was within the world of this story effortlessly. Every moment in this book brought something spectacular to the story, and I can't wait to see how it continues. Thank you NetGalley, Catherine Doyle, and Katherine Webber for an arc.

Engaging and interesting book overall! The first part was a bit slow, almost too slow so took off stars for that. The magic system and world building were most interesting of all in this book for me.

So this one I grabbed because of the cover! And that is pretty much where my enjoyment of the story ended. This is one of those stories where I was just bored out of my mind. I read maybe 15% of it and just had to call it quits.

SO CUTE -
I loved this book. It had some of my favorite tropes - enemies to lovers, forced proximity, long lost princess like UGH
it immediately jumps into action and we are beside the characters at every obstacle.
the magic aspect, the world building, the comedy - it was so fun to read. it felt like a refreshing breath within the fantasy genre.
the sisters are amazing. i love a strong fmc & that’s exactly what we got.
the romance ughh - enemies, slow burn, romcom. it literally couldn’t get better. i loved seeing the romance grow and i thought it was paced out really well.
the world is enchanting & sucked me right in. i loved every bit of detail we got. i felt like it was such a well thought out world with so many interesting parts.
the back story to the witches and the lore of the land that we got added so much more to the story!
i cant wait for book 2
- thank you harper collins for an ARC! release date : may 17th

Thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley for the eARC of TWIN CROWNS by Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber, UK authors.

This is a YA fantasy novel about twin sisters separated at birth. This is a page turner and I enjoyed the novel.

Highly recommended for fans of strong women and fantasy.

Everything about this book drew me in immediately. The title, the cover art, the synopsis. Once I started reading, I was not disappointed! This book included all the tropes I love and with witches! This book was magical!

This book is such a treat!

I love a good sister swap(twin here), especially when it’s filled with exciting adventure and romance

Rose and Wren are completely different but both so lovable. Reading them adjust to their new surroundings was quite funny

Elske is my favorite princess though

Shen and Tor…what else can I say besides dreamy? I could have used a little more romantic development, but hopefully that will come later

The ending was a bit sad and consequences will be coming in full force for the next book

I’m super excited to see where Wren and Rose’s journey will lead, I think this series will definitely be a favorite

*thank you so much to Catherine Doyle, Katherine Webber and HarperCollins for giving me a copy of the book for an honest review*

Twin Crowns delivers big on four hundred and eighty pages of pure charm. It has royalty,witches, adventure, and a whole lot of heart!

You will follow Twin sisters Wren and Rose, separated at birth, each raised with conflicting political and ethical views. You will learn each sisters truth through duel prospective chapters while going on dangerous adventures,traversing court politics, and you may even meet some dashing strangers along the way. Who is fit to rule? Who will end up on the throne? You'll have to read to find out!

If you are someone who can't get enough of YA tropes, your going to want to pick this one up. If you're someone who finds them overdone, you may want to pick it up too! The tropes are done in such a cheeky and self aware way that even the most familiar moments feel fresh and exciting.

Twin Crowns has all the ease of reading that comes with a classic YA but it felt just a bit elevated for me. The humor is whip smart and I felt that the authors were in ways poking fun at certain troupes. Lightly sprinkled political intrigue and ethical dilemmas allows the reader to get as involved as they please. This book can serve as an easy, page turning, beach read or a though provoking story, it's truly masterful in that way. I suspect this will find a wide audience and I am dying to read the next installment.


I'd like to thank the Publisher and NetGalley for the advanced look in exchange for my honest review.

The premise of this is really cool and the world is interesting. At times the pacing was a bit awkward, but the story finds its feet in the moments between the characters.

Twin Crowns is a young adult fantasy novel promoted as a "high stakes fantasy rom-com" by its publisher, which naturally intrigued my interest given my interests in both fantasy and romances. That said, the description doesn't really work - this is in no way a rom-com even if it has romantic subplots for each of its two leads. Instead the story centered around the classic twin switch, with one twin raised as a princess and the other raised to try and get revenge on the man who raised her sister and who murdered their parents due to their magic. And so you have one girl trying to pretend to be the other to achieve her revenge, while the other is kidnapped and discovers the truth behind the lies she was brought up believing, with each girl getting a love interest along the way to make things more complicated.

It's a pretty standard setup, and it's done fine, but well the book never really grabbed at me, with so much of the character dynamics and setup feeling more like it's something that has to happen by the conventions of the genre more than things that actually might interestingly happen. It's very easily readable, and I finished it in two days without difficulty, but at the same time, I also never really felt that eager to finish it. There's nothing wrong with this, and if you're looking for YA fantasy works you could certainly do a lot worse, but I was hoping for a bit more in the romance and character department than we really got here.

Note: This is some kind of series - I'm guessing a duology - although it ends on a reasonable note for stopping here - with some serious cliffhangery subplots but also a major resolution of the big plots of this book. But if you're looking for a book that's entirely stand alone - and it's not clear from the marketing that this isn't - this isn't it.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Years ago, The Country of Eana was rocked by a horror - the King and Queen were found murdered, with their sole daughter Rose saved by the Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne. The murders were blamed on the Witches who have always haunted the country of Eana, and Rathborne has waged a war on them since to kill them all in vengeance and for the security of the country.

Wren has been raised to know that story was a lie: that the King and Queen were killed by the Kingsbreath himself out of the hatred of witches instilled in him by generations of men....witches like the Queen herself. For she is the second daughter of the King and Queen, the twin to Rose, who was saved by her nursemaid and brought to her grandmother's witch community, who taught her how to use her enchanting magic and trained her for one mission: to take Rose's place, to assassinate the Kingsbreath, and to return Eana to being a land safe for witches like herself and her people, who have always wanted just to live in the country.

And so she and her friend Shen kidnap Rose and have Wren take her place, just so Wren can be crowned in Rose's place and achieve it all....except Wren has no idea of how palace politics works, and the political schemes of The Kingsbreath may be more than she bargained for.

Meanwhile Rose has grown up believing she would be Queen, and knowing how to be Royal, despite the Kingsbreath controlling her every action - something she believes will soon be over when she is crowned and married to a neighboring prince. But after she's kidnapped, she soon discovers there is more to the world than the palace, and that the lies she grew up believing were just that....and something she has to do something about....especially as there's no way Wren can pull things off without Rose's knowledge of politics and Queendom.

The two sisters, Rose and Wren, will be forced to each make choices to try to better Eana....choices that may be impossible due to the sinister plots of others to ensure witches like them never have power again.....
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Twin Crowns alternates each chapter between Rose and Wren's perspectives as it attempts to tell a pretty classic genre story - on one hand, you have the girl who grew up rich and privileged under a lie, who has yearned for adventure but always been too controlled to take it....who gets that adventure but also a new understanding of the basis of her life such that she will then act to change it; on the other, you have the twin who grew up knowing the truth but in poverty, who attempts to take over the position of royalty to make things better, only to find herself out of her depth. Usually this twin switch is voluntary, but that's not the case here - Wren orchestrates Rose's kidnapping under the plan of her grandmother - and the result is that the story plays out a bit differently for better or worse.

For example, while Wren is a bit out of her depth in playing Princess - something that was apparently never thought about at all by the planners of the plot for some reason? - she never actually has to rule or do anything other than date - as The Kingsbreath is so controlling as to prevent Rose from having any particular power, something that Rose oddly never really recognizes until she comes back. Similarly, while Rose does have kind of an adventure getting to the rest of the Witches, that urge for adventure is never really entertained by the book, with the book instead focusing upon educating Rose on her background as a Witch, how the Witch community is really full of just other people, and Rose struggling to reconcile the two worlds she knows.

This works well in some places and not so well in others. Rose's treatment by the Witch community is for example a standout, with Rose not being unanimously welcomed and having to deal with some Witches who just want her dead or harmed for her privileged upbringing and for playing a role in the persecution of their people. This feels very real, and Rose's reactions to it, the reactions to her grandma's handling of the community and her, and more, make pretty good sense. So Rose's turn of mind is very believable and understandable, and very easy to appreciate. Wren's outrage is similarly well done at all the control that the Kingsbreath has, and her desperation to find some way to subvert it, and him. Both protagonists have solid, if not super remarkable, voices, which make them enjoyable leads.

The problem is that so much of the rest of the plot just feels perfunctory. Rose falls in love with the Witch who kidnaps her (Wren's friend) just seemingly because, and while there are moments there, none of them feel like anything special or unique or different. Similarly, Wren falls in love with the evil neighboring country's prince's bodyguard, and it just feels like "of course she'd be mutually attracted to this character, why else would he be there", with that character then taking actions with hard choices that well....just seem to be what the plot dictates; it never actually feels real, when that character should be having major conflicts over it all (and then in the final act, he makes a choice that seems completely out of line). Moreover, the antagonists are just laughingly evil, from the Kingsbreath to the evil neighboring country, so they don't really have any depth to them.

The result is a book that is never bad, but is one that is also never really standing out in any way for how it changes up the formula its clearly invoking - especially without the romantic subplots really working too well. There's a secret myth that is invoked a few times before being revealed at the end to set up part of the cliffhanger, with the other half involving that neighboring country, so I guess things will be resolved there, but I'm not likely to check them out. And well there's enough of an ending here that I can be satisfied finishing here, for what that's worth. This is solidish YA, but there's just not much more here and so much better out there.

Thank you to netgally and the publisher! Described as a romcom fantasy series it lives up to the description. I’m always a sucker for multiple povs. Will release more once the book releases

A solid fantasy story told through both twin's POV, depicting a world in which royalty is at war with witchcraft. Twin princesses, separated at birth, are the main characters in this fantasy that is well written and enchanting with great worldbuilding, wonderful characters, and a fast-paced plot.

On level with Adrienne Young or Tricia Levenseller, Twin Crowns is a striking new fantasy about twins witches separated at birth, and the kingdom they're destined to rule.

I absolutely loved the characters in this book. Rose, Wren, Shen Lol, Ansel, Rowena, Tor, Banba and others are fantastic! They're all so well-written, believable, and immediately likeable, or at least understandable. The world building is phenomenal. I felt like I was riding across the Restless Sands or taking tea in the Anadawn rose garden. I feel like the romance in this book is precisely what romance in a YA novel should be: a part of the story without pushing for more than teenagers should be ready for. There's some making out, mentions of desire, but no explicit intimacy. This story is set up perfectly for a sequel without feeling like a cliffhanger. I absolutely will be buying a physical copy of this book to add to my library.

Can't wait for another book from these authors!

Thanks to NetGalley for my e-arc of this book. All opinions here are my own.