Wren belongs to the House of Bone and is one of 10 novitiates training for the Bonewood trial, where they will required to navigate a haunted forest and sever 3 ghostly tethers before dawn. If successful, they will be granted the role of either a ghost-fighting Valkyr, or a tie-severing Reapyr. When sabotage causes Wren to fail, she is banished to a third rate position on the Border Wall to defend the wastelands beyond.

I liked the setup but got lost shortly after by the worldbuilding notes, which took me out of the pacing of the story.

After the trial, Wren tries explaining to the judges what happened but they wouldn't let her speak. I found this odd since they allowed another novitiate to share their side of the story, not only believing them, but also rewarding them, without further due diligence. It seemed like a convenient way to overlook things and move the story along. When Wren reaches the Border Wall, the highest-ranking Bonesmith decides she wants to help Wren prove herself, and goes so far as to show Wren all these secret places in the fort. Things like this just felt out of place, so unfortunately I ended up putting the book down. This wasn't for me, but the setting was really cool if the synopsis is something that interests you.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

The best YA book I’ve read in many years!! I cannot express how thrilling this book was! Move over Sarah J Maas this author is coming in hot.

Wren is an amazing powerful female lead who embodies the troublemakers and risk takers and people who just want to be them. Amazing lead! The characters in this book are relatable and loveable and you’ll quickly find yourself bonding with them and rooting for them.

Bonesmith is one amazing storyline with plot twist after plot twist after plot twist. Think Game of Thrones meets Tim Burton. I absolutely cannot give enough praise! I’ll be waiting for the next book, I need more!

I really dislike reading/watching/physically experiencing situations where I'm expecting someone to get in trouble, disappoint someone, or behave stupidly/embarrass themselves, etc. Since we already know Wren is going to fail her trial because of sabotage, and since the book makes it clear right off the bat that Wren craves her father's approval, I spent the first five chapters awash in dread.

After that, things picked up for me, and eventually this book was difficult for me to put down and ended up an auto-5-star because I had to ban myself from reading it before I got my work done for the day.

Wren is a valkyr in training. In the bone smiths, the valkyr is the one to battle ghosts and protect the reapyr. The reapyr is responsible for finding the bone that anchor's the spirit to the body and cutting it to set the spirit free.

Wren is the kind of pupil who is too smart and too bored for their own good. They behave in a manner that generally tends to get them in trouble, and instead of being chastened by scolding, they build up a bit of a husk to convince themselves they don't care, and their behaviour just becomes more bold/risky as they push the line and try to outdo themselves.

She is impetuous, and she is also clearly quite lonely, though she doesn't really allow herself the luxury of feeling it too deeply. The way the House of Bone is run, friendships and familial closeness are discouraged.

Wren enters her trial expecting to win, but she doesn't. Instead, she is sent out to the outskirts of their land, adjacent to the Breach where the biggest and baddest ghosts roam. There, she finally starts picking up bits and pieces of information that fill the gaps in her education/indoctrination. Needless to say, things aren't exactly as she thought.

She meets Leo, the third prince of the House of Gold, the spare to the spare, and they hit it off quite well. On a tour of the border wall, shit hits fan, and Wren ends up working with her house's sworn enemy, an iron smith, to try and rescue him.

This book is generally told from Wren's perspective but there are a couple of chapters here and there with a different voice. I think there are three altogether including Wren. There is romance, but it isn't the star of the show. The mystery and intrigue take the front seat.

There is a lot of exposition, but it didn't feel excessive. I actually appreciated and enjoyed reading it. It didn't come off as info-dumpy to me. It just read as the first book in a series.

I quite enjoyed the magic system. The different houses were quite interesting, though we don't get a lot of info on those outside of the House of Bone. I liked the lore. I liked the characters. There were a couple of twists that were kind of obvious, but not all were. There was sufficient foreshadowing to get the gears turning. As stated above, the romance was not so much at the fore, but it is definitely present and a big part of the story. I think the author is playing the long game on that front.

All in all, I thought it was an excellent book and I'm eager to read the rest of the series.

Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto
Publication Date: July 25, 2023

Want to know who I think is a significantly underrated author on this app? Nicki Pau Preto. Her fantastic YA political trilogy featuring magical creatures, betrayal, friendship and romance is quintessential YA reading to me. I can’t honestly think of a single critique in the Crown of Feathers books and that’s truly saying something given the colour scheme of those books are flaming red and orange.

In Bonesmith, we follow Wren whose grandmother leads the House of Bones. She’s almost become a valkyr - a ghost fighting warrior. She just needs to complete her last trial but when things go very wrong she fails to complete the trial. She is banished by her own family to the Border Wall. When the prince is kidnapped she realises this could be her chance to redeem herself in her family’s eyes and sets out beyond the wall (the Game of Thrones white walker comparison here is pretty spot on) to get him back.

I was a tiny bit sceptical if she could do it again. Especially with a much more dark concept but she absolutely nails this. What Preto really seems to have a knack for, is mythology. She creates this layered world that you can so easily believe in its existence and buy into the hundreds of years of history. You can understand the underlying tensions and easily recognize the implications of big events.

Yet within this world of death exists a story of a girl who learns to question everything she thought she knew to be true along the way. She makes some big mistakes. She at times can be arrogant and acts first and thinks later but she has big ambitions. She makes some friends and maybe a love interest (because Nicki Pau Preto also does slow burn romance really well) somewhere along the way.

Although I thought the few and far between chapters from other points of view felt kind of randomly placed. I’m all for including different POVs (not really but I’m trying to turn a new leaf) and the one (maybe two… I’m sorry my memory is horrible!) Julian chapter felt so out of place I had to read it back again because I had become used to reading the events from Wren’s point of view.

It’s the kind of book I want to grab copies of to give to all my friends so we can dissect it together!

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing an advanced reading copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 4.75⭐️

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for gifting me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! It’s been described as Game of Thrones meets Gideon the Ninth and I would say that’s accurate, just in a simplified, YA version. The world building was great and very fleshed out. The inclusion of the map was very helpful and it’s fun to see where the characters are travelling to. I find with high fantasies the timeline can be unrealistic, but this one flowed convincingly. The inclusion of the different “Houses” were definitely drawn from GOT which was cool. The one thing that bothered me was the name drop of the cholera epidemic. In my opinion, when it is a high fantasy, most times it means that it is a completely made up universe with made up diseases, and by directly naming the disease a cholera epidemic just threw me off a little.

I really like the magic system and the concept of the bonesmiths. The undead and ghosts were super interesting and I had an easy time picturing their appearances at the different decaying levels. The FMC, Wren, was such a fun character to follow. She’s bold, brash, impulsive and imperfect but you can’t help rooting for her the entire time. Leopold was a fun character as well, definitely the comedic relief. His and Wren’s friendship was fantastic and funny. Julian was exactly who I expected him to be. The forced proximity between Wren and Julian was fantastically written in my opinion. There are technically three point of views as well, but because it was written in third person, it was very easy to understand which POV I was reading at a given time.

While this book clocks in at 464 pages, it was such a fast read. The chapters were a good length and the story kept me hooked the entire time. It was a great introduction to a new fantasy series! I highly recommend checking it out when it releases July 25th, 2023!

My only issue with this book is that it’s over!! My goodness, this was one intense wild ride that I couldn’t get enough of!! I stayed glued to the pages wishing for more and more story because this has absolutely everything I love in a book: magic, ghosts, bones, enemies to lovers, mystery, intrigue, stolen princes, and so much more! Wryn was an absolutely fierce heroine and I loved seeing her arc as the story progressed and how her initial cockiness wore down into something so strong and resilient. She’s an amazing character that I couldn’t help but love. I completely invested in the relationship between Wryn and Julien and obviously I can’t spoil anything except to say it was intense throughout and I’m rooting for those two! Leo was also such a fun surprise, he was comedic and smarter than others gave him credit for. This whole story start to finish was thrilling! I literally cannot wait for the next!! Thank you so much to Simon and Schuster for the arc and I cannot wait to share it on my Instagram the week of April 10th!

I really enjoyed this! I found I struggled to keep things together in the beginning (ad happens with a lot of first books in fantasy series lol) but once the story really got going I was super into it. All in all, a great fantasy read that I definitely recommend. I cannot wait to continue the series and get more of Julian 😍 4.5/5 stars.

I am a huge fan of Nicki and Crown of feather. I was beyond excited to get this arc. I enjoyed the story which is a mix Crown of feathers and Gideon the Ninth. I unfortunately feel like it was done so closely to COF, except its not animal magic its bone magic. I had a very hard time picturing characters and settings and that took away from the story. I love how much wren is growing and cant wait to see who she becomes as the series progresses, and for her to interact with some new characters that will be coming in book two.

I loved reading this book! I love her writing, but this is the start of a new series. But the synopsis sounded really great, and oh, it was, I had such a great time reading this book! Wren was such a fantastic character, she's a rebel, she's a wild child, a thrill seeker.

I did have a bit of disjointed time reading this book. I was reading it one day, had to go run errands, and got a flat tire, on a highway, going up a hill. So that was stressful, plus it was really cold, so my plans changed, and I put this book down, and then picked it back later. So that wasn't the best, but it got me through the beginning with the unfairness of what she went through!

This world with various types of smiths, from Bonesmiths to Goldsmiths and Ironsmiths, was so interesting! And the history, with the Breach, and the Uprising, with the Ironsmith's Citadel being within the confines of the Border Wall, and the rebelling the Ironsmiths did against the crown. Events that only happened a generation ago, that her father and uncle fought in, when her uncle was killed.

There was a lot of political goings on in this book, what with the kidnapping of a prince. That Wren has to work with Julian, who was part of the group of the kidnappers, it's an interesting situation. I loved watching them on this quest, and how things end, well, I need to know what's going to happen next!

Loved reading this book, and I can't wait for the sequel!

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I was very excited to get my hands on an ecopy of this book! I can't tell you how giddy I was. But unfortunately it turned out to be a bit premature. The summary sounded so promising. But it was a very heavy one to wade through. It felt a lot like flipping through an authors notes for their world. There was not a lot of dialogue and action. Which is really what I was looking forward to. I'm not sure if the author had a hard time trying to juggle all of those elements in the story. But it felt like a chore to read it because there was also a lot of overexplaining happening. I think a lot of stuff probably could have been edited out. I did enjoy the characters interactions but they were honestly buried. Maybe the second book will be better?