Thanks NetGalley for this ARC I’m exchange for a review. Unfortunately, I DNF at 40%. The world building was a bit hard to follow for me and I just couldn’t get into it.

I have been waiting for Celtic mythology to step into the light and have it's moment to shine. So, when I saw this book, I leapt at the chance to read it. The author's passion for the subject matter was clear and, while this book didn't live up to my expectations, it is certainly a solid and refreshing addition to the YA Fantasy genre. We need more banshees in our lives!

Things I liked:
Female characters- Neve and Una really jumped off the page for me. I love to see strong female characters who have positive relationships. It is important in every genre, but especially YA.
Celtic Inspiration- as mentioned above
Setting- beautiful and immersive

What challenges me:
Flow- I never really got into a flow with this story. I worked hard to reengage as several intervals.
Main relationship- Enemies to Lovers requires a slow burn to feel authentic. I quite enjoy insta-love and friends to lovers stories, but this wasn't that either. They were just kind of grumpy with each other for a lot of the book.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This was my first Celtic mythology YA book and Love it. I found myself going down a rabbit hole of looking up Celtic myths after reading this book.

Unfortunately, Queen Among the Dead did not do it for me. I was interested in this book because of the comparison to Adrienne Young, but the world-building or story-telling did not feel comparable.

I fully believe that the author loves her story and the premise is extremely promising; it just did not work for me. I think a bit of solid hashing out details of world-building and fully fleshing out the plot and magic would go a long way.

I do appreciate the opportunity to read and review Queen Among the Dead. I give it a 3/5 because I wholeheartedly believe it has potential. I will likely pick it back up after it’s published to see if it is any different from the e-ARC.

It wasn’t what I expected at all, it definitely was a well developed story. The storytelling was unique and the characters were loveable and realistic which is a hard to find combo. I love the color of this cover btw such a pretty color. I thought it was gonna be mid but it was better than that, you should check it out once it’s out!

📚 BOOK REVIEW 📚

Queen Among the Dead by Lesley Livingston is a YA fantasy with an exciting premise. Based on Celtic mythology, the book follows the kingdom of Eire’s princess and a Druid apprentice-turned-thief. There’s an interesting magic system and potential for a great enemies-to-lovers dynamic, so I was very excited to get an eARC of this one from Netgalley.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I felt like there was quite a bit of info dumping about the mythology in the first half of the book, telling us about the world instead of showing us. This was combined with a LOT of foreshadowing of ominous destruction to come. So much so, that once the disasters did start to strike and the action started happening I was underwhelmed because I’d already predicted it. And somehow I just did not connect with the characters as much as I usually do in YA fantasy novels.

Queen Among the Dead releases in January. This one could still be great for you if you enjoy an intricate supernatural magic system, badass female leads and Celtic-inspired mythology. I read this on my cruise vacation after finishing a handful of really stellar YA fantasy reads and it just didn’t measure up for me.

1/5 Stars

Thanks to NetGally and Zando Young Readers for providing the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.


Queen Among the Dead sounded very promising but unfortunately, failed to deliver.

The beginning was very hard to get into and it did not get any better with each chapter. Some chapters were just there to info-dump the reader for the sake of not leaving them blind and unaware of what is going on in the world. Some were there to move the nonexistent plot. I say nonexistent because up until the 60-70% mark you do not really see where the story is headed. Even later, you wonder why these events are happening near the end.

The characters were pretty much aimless and had no idea what to do with their lives.
Neve Anann Eriu of the Tautha Dé, the second princess, the daughter of the Dagda and beloved of the wolf, our main heroine was lost in majority of the story and had no idea what to do or what is going on, making rash and idiotic decisions here and there. She was just going with the flow until pretty much the last few chapters.

*
“Ronan wondered if not having to live by your wits meant not ever bothering to use them”

“It occurred to Neve belatedly that, if she’d been thinking,”

These two quotes perfectly describe Neve.
*

Ronan on the other hand, our pessimist thief was equally no better.

There was no chemistry between the main pair and frankly I am just having big question marks on how they came to be.

Also, the formatting of the ebook on Kindle was very distracting and annoying to be honest. I wanted to quit more than once because of this.

This book had all of the Celtic folklore that I loved as a child, but the story itself was hard to get into. There were a lot of info dumps, that made the story very confusing at times, and it was hard to keep the plot straight. I found myself having to reread paragraphs multiple times to understand what was happening.

I had really high hopes for this one. I love to see new and different retelling or inspirations from different cultures and I haven't seen a Celtic one..

However, there was a lot of telling and no showing. There was hardly any dialogue and that contributed to me not being able to fully connect to the characters at all. I didn't care about them and I didn't really feel the need to want to know what happens next. Poor execution but good idea.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publishers for a chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

DNF at 15%.

I think this was more stuff subjectively wrong than objectively wrong. I just couldn’t get into this and didn’t want to keep wasting my time. I felt myself falling into a reading slump. Just a lot of lore and new words all at once and I couldn’t deal with all the exposition in order to get to the main plot. Maybe I could’ve pushed through, but I just decided not to.

Celtic mythology? I figured this book would be right up my alley!
However it fell somewhat flat for me. For one, the world building was dense but done in massive info dumps that by the third time it happened my brain felt worn out. Perhaps if I was in a better mindset to focus it would've gone over well, but it felt like it was an overused method. Also all of the names threw me for a loop. I'm used to epic fantasies that require learning different clan names, places, and people, but I think on top of the massive info dumping it became too much.
I really wanted to like this book more, but I think it just wasn't for me.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for this ARC!

Story Synopsis: Neve, the younger of two sisters of Eire’s king, finds an unlikely ally in a druid-turned-thief. When Neve’s world is turned upside-down, and she’s forced to confront magic in a kingdom where magic is strictly forbidden, Neve must figure out how to stay true to herself and navigate the complex social structures of her kingdom.

Thoughts & Feelings: Queen Among the Dead is based on Celtic mythology, so I was hopeful and excited to read this ARC. Unfortunately, it fell a bit flat for me. I loved the characters but felt the emphasis of the writing was on the wrong things. I found myself missing big pieces of action because they weren’t written in a way that I knew a battle was being fought. I also felt there was too much setup of the world. Is this meant to be a series? Who can tell?

*2.5 stars*

Thank you to NETGALLEY and Zando Projects for giving me an E-ARC of this book. My review is given voluntarily.

To start off, I really enjoyed the characters personalities, Neve was a really strong female lead. I really enjoyed watching her interactions with other characters and also seeing her growth as the book progresses.

I’m going to keep this short, I was confused the majority of the book. I felt like there was so many terms and information just dumped that it was overwhelming. I couldn’t remember if the things mentioned was a group of people, a ranking, or who knows what else. I felt just overwhelmed by it all.

I did enjoy what I knew what was going on, though I felt like I got ripped off with that ending. Overall, I felt quite a bit disappointed when it came to this book. I had quite the expectations and it didn’t meet them. The writing style was great, but the building was too much at one time.

Queen Among the Dead by Lesley Livingston
“Now. Seize Destiny by the throat and make it bow to you.”
~~~
First off, I would like to thank Lesley Livingston, Zando Young Reader, and Netgalley for sending me an eARC. Queen Among the Dead out 1/17/23.
I enjoyed the idea of this book and enjoyed the characters. I loved the idea of using Irish mythology and then putting a twist on it for some fantasy. Some of the scenes were also really intense, mostly at the end. Which to me felt a little odd.
Personally, I think this will be a book that I will have to wait to reread when it is available on audiobook form. The reason I say that is because there were a lot of times where I was extremely confused by the context; whether it was describing the locations, magic system, politics, or just the relationship between some of the characters. Livingston’s writing is really neat, but some part in the book just got confusing where I could not figure out the story.
Now again, that’s a personal opinion. Others may be able to read it perfectly fine, that’s awesome. But as someone who’s dyslexic, this book would be one that I need someone else to read to make it make sense for me.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the ARC!

This book was WILD. And I loved every second of it!

I just finished this book and I have mixed feelings about it, sadly. I was soo excited by the premise of this story; Celtic mythology & fantasy, helloo!! I just feel like I was sooo confused as I was reading. The plot took a while to shape itself properly, and now that I know what happens I understand how things progress but it was SO confusing to read. There's also so much world-building, like maybe too much honestly? Or it wasn't done concisely enough- I'm not sure. I just think this needed another round of editing to tighten the story and make everything flow better; the fact that I was so confused & so much time was spent explaining things made the characters suffer. Also everything jumps around so quickly. Ack. That being said, I love the premise and the elements of this story, the magic system- such good pieces here that just needed a little more finessing! Thanks to NetGalley & the author for the chance to read this.

Thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC!

The Celtic inspiration for Queen Among the Dead made me want to learn more about Celtic Mythology. Because of the names unfamiliar to me, I think this book would be fantastic on audio.

I really enjoyed Neve and Rowan, but I felt like they were such surface characters and I wanted to go deeper. I couldn’t keep up with the plot but overall I did enjoy reading this.

‘Queen Among the Dead’ by Lesley Livingston had me hooked from the beginning. Full of Celtic influence, this fascinating, unique story fully swept me away. Definitely recommend!

A YA fantasy that uses Celtic mythology and legends, the title and the description drew me in and I was very excited to read this, but unfortunately it fell flat for me.

This mostly comes down to it not really picking up story-wise until about half way through and my dislike of both Neve and Ronan, our narrators. I found both of them to be fairly annoying and incredibly pessimistic for most of the book and it wasn't fun to read. Neve also falls prey to the "princess who wants to fight not be a lady, her older sister is the perfect court lady and she feels she cannot live up to the expectations" and Ronan is the dark, broody love interest that's unfit for a princess as a thief and (ex) Druid. Their relationship just seemed to just happen by nature of it being a YA book adhering to certain tropes, more than it felt like they had grown past being enemies and into romantic interests.

Overall it just lands in the middle of the road, it wasn't bad but it wasn't anything I'd reread or recommend to anyone unless they were specifically looking for a YA Celtic fantasy book. It definitely had the elements to be an intriguing read, but it didn't succeed for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Zando Projects for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

DNF at 42%

It has sadly taken me 7 days to get to 42% and It felt like I was forcing myself to get through it. I also missed that it was pdf (oops on my part) and so it was really harsh on my eyes and I could never read longer than 15 minutes at a time.

The world building was a bit too much, too slow, too dense, with not much else bringing you in to the story alongside the info dumping. Ronan met Neve once YEARS ago and again in the future, and yes I can totally believe in love at first sight - if it's written in a way that sells it, but Ronan acts as if he TRULLY knows her and they have been acquainted for some time personally, and his been in love with her forever, it felt abit 'quick' to me, I even wondered if I had missed something, if they had perhaps had more interaction somewhere? But nope, just met the 3 times at that point.

I am sure that this book is amazing, it's perhaps just not for me, and that's perfectly okay, we all have our own tastes and likes 😊