Of Cages and Crowns by Brianna Joy Crump ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Monroe Benson, a goddess-touched girl gifted with fire powers, has to participate in the Culling where the other nine goddess-touched girls fight each other to death to become the Queen of Erydia.
Though at first, I found it similar to The Selection series and The Hunger Games, Of Cages and Crown blew my mind away.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The characters are very well written. Each one of them is unique and intriguing. Monroe is the typical strong and kind female character. She is very relatable, practical and sometimes a bit susceptible. Her powers are really awesome.
Cohen is also the typical prince- handsome, perfect and kind. He is emotionally driven to do things most of the time even though it means feeling the wrath of the evil Queen, his mother, Viera.
I relished their encounters. They have good chemistry and are heart-warming romantics.
Among the other characters, I love Uriel (she's a sweetheart!), Britta (I love her caring nature), Nadia (she's really innocent and kind), Ambrose (very caring of his family and thoughtful) Dellacov (he and Uri make a pretty good pair and I love his protectiveness) and June (he's a really good tutor and brother.)
The antagonists (mostly women) were all cruel and scary. Viera, Larkin and Kinsley... gosh! They gave me chills. They are just cold and heartless.

The prologue gave a clear introduction to the world and it was amazing. The plot wasn't what I expected- in a good way. Sometimes, I could guess correctly what was going to happen next but the twists and turns made my jaw drop. For instance, I didn't expect Cohen to be that dying stranger Monroe saved and Kace betraying his siblings (that made me cross his name off my favourite characters.)
I just loved the author's imagination. The pacing was perfect, the description- top notch and the creativity was fantabulous.
But at some places, it was a tiny bit unrealistic. Like, near the ending of the book, after Viera was poisoning Monroe she recovered really quickly. Yeah, I understood she withdrew the poison but doesn't its effect last for a little longer? You couldn't heal so fast when you were given such a high dose of poison and Nadia was healing Cohen and she couldn't have healed Monroe that quick without touching her, hence my reasoning.

Ultimately, it's a 5-star book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will surely recommend it to all the fantasy and YA lovers. This book deserves more readers. I'd love to read the sequel soon.