I love a good fantasy novel and this didn’t disappoint. First, I appreciated the diversity of the characters and the way they interacted was well written. You could picture this group of young individuals actually hanging out, joking and picking on each other in a loving way. I found myself smiling at their antics often, this band if “misfits” that make a family.

As I said, I appreciate a fantasy plot line and was excited to be introduced to many unique and global mythical creatures. While the writing was a bit jerky at times, the only real critique I had was with these fantasy creatures. While I loved their inclusion for variety compared to the standard vampire, fairy, werewolf… they are a bit obscure and the average Joe has no idea what they are. A better description in future books would really enhance the experience of visualizing scenes. I found myself googling their names so I had a better grasp of what was happening.

The overall plot was well paced, introduced many fun and intriguing characters, and set up well for future stories in the series.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. I will be reading the next books in the Wayward Series!

This book started off slowly, gaining momentum the more read. The writing isn't flawlessly the author creates unique characters and builds an interesting world.

I admired the matter of fact portrayal of LGBTQ characters. They were people with varied, unhappy backgrounds banded together to help others.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publishers and the author for this eARC. I will keep an eye out for thus author in the future.

I am not picky about anything with my protagonists in the books I read (race, religion, sexuality, etc.), so I just picked this up on the basis of the blurb alone. I dived into this one, and I settled in for a good read. While this book wasn’t perfect, I did quite enjoy it. The writing is a little awkward, and there were also times where information would pop up out of nowhere like the reader already knew it and confused me a little. But all that aside, once I got used to it, I quickly enjoyed myself. I see lots of potential in this series, and I’ll read the second one. 3 ½ stars rounded up to 4. Recommend.

*ARC received with thanks from NetGalley*

I’m not a habitual reader of magical fantasy and am new to this author. Perhaps a grounding in the general tropes of this realm would have helped me here. As it was, me and this book took a wee while to get going, and I felt a bit like I wasn’t reading the first instalment in a series but had perhaps missed the first few.

The main plot arc of this book was its strength and started gaining more momentum at the 40% mark. Up to that point, much as I don’t generally mind a story that begins in media res, I found the world building and character sketching a little distancing and hard to get a hold of. I felt I was given a fair bit of information in somewhat disparate facts to retain rather than shown how things operate in this universe.

I liked the setting of Marcelite, the magician mother goose with her project to raise funds for a safe house/found family for her rainbow brood of strays. It took a while to get a feel for the main characters too: Kendall of unknown adopted origin and her friends Leif the random Norwegian, Jian the Taotie and Diego who is learning magic but not yet settled on a God to commune with.

From 60% onwards the writing and the plot started moving me along nicely and felt rich and better developed. Here we learn that withholding some information about Kendall was a deliberate choice and something that will continue to unfold as the series progresses. Overall the world of our ragtag bunch of supernatural body part harvesters/foster home builders broadly linked in heritage to all four corners of the world, the ancient gods of each culture, the magic system, and the various creatures encountered and defeated was a lot to take in. But it was nicely woven into the overall plot arc of this book especially towards the latter sections.

Whew there is a lot going on in this story. First, I have to say that I love Kendall’s family of choice. Kendall has run from her past and found a family of misfits she can relate to. They work together to build a future for themselves, and others like them. This crazy group sucked me in and made me love them warts and all. Magic and mayhem and familial love. I recommend this book so hard.

NetGalley ARC Educator 550974

Oh if I could give this infinite stars I would. This is start of a great series. We have a diverse range of characters with an accepting mother figure, Marceline, wonderful and sassy aunts, Ms. Fortune and a surly but aloof grandma Mrs. Morel. Then we come to the rag tag quartet, Lief, Jian, Kendall and Diego. Each magical in their own way. Oh I loved this book. I started and could not put it down. I can't wait for part two. Any of the major networks should buy the screen rights now.