This was a really great book and I wished I had read it sooner!

I loved the contrast of the villages in the present and in the past. I think it brilliantly showed the difference of when different groups of people gain power, what it looks like and how they use it. I also really enjoyed the world building and the characters.

I will definitely read the next books in this trilogy.

I was disappointed to see that the author doesn't include queer people into her worldbuilding. Any world that includes gendered magic like this one needs to include queer people.

This was very readable and in many cases fun read. The whole concept of the story was fascinating and intriguing although I have to admit that I had some problems with the main character. For me she was a little bit boring and bland and I think there were some scenes where she acted a little bit silly.
I quite enjoy love or romance in my books but I had some issues with the element in this particular story because it felt rushed and almost like insta-love which is not something I prefer.
Overalll the story was quick and easy to read, the premise was interesting and I don't regret diving into this one.

Thanks to Netgalley and Patchwork Press for giving me this book to review.

Nobody’s Goddess is a really good YA fantasy novel which is deeper than you might think as it is about choice, freewill and how power can affect how the different genders treat each other. There is a bit of a beauty and the beast theme to this book but there is so much more going on in the story. Well written and with a few twists I did not see coming but I was a fan of the fact that all but one of the questions I had in this book were answered by the end.

Noll is defiant and passionate but also lonely, however, she is also selfish and seems like the person who wants what they cannot have. There was a lot of interesting characters in this story, such as The Lord, Alvilda and Avery but I did not understand Noll’s attraction to Jurij as he was very blah.

I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the next two books in this series. I would recommend Nobody’s Goddess to those who want to read a thought-provoking YA fantasy book.

Requested, but I was not able to review this in a timely manner. I do not foresee having time to review it in the future. My apologies.

Nobody’s Goddess (The Never Veil) is the first book in a series about a small town in which women hold all the power over the fate of men. Boys and men cannot show their faces and must wear wooden masks around women. If a woman sees his face before he has found his Goddess, he will disappear as if he never existed. While young and masked, these boys will discover their one Goddess and must prove themselves worthy of love by the time she is a true woman.

Young men lose their free will when they find their goddess.

The interesting piece of this story is how the magic works. There is a castle in the town which no woman can look at without causing an earthquake. There is so much mystery surrounding The Lord in the castle. A few rumors about him being immortal, and yet many don’t truly believe that. Immortality is too hard for them to grasp but they believe in a magic they can’t truly prove. If they look at an unmasked male he disappears, no one but his intended woman will remember him. It has happened of course, but to the townsfolk, that woman is considered a crazy old crone who never found a man. No one believes her story. And yet, they are careful to follow the ways of masks and the “Returnings”.

Noll will be Nobody’s Goddess. Nobody's Goddess Book Cover Image

The quite beautiful Noll is unique in her town. She doesn’t like the loss of free will her friends face when they grow up to be men. When they find their Goddess, they don’t remember her friendship at all. When their woman/Goddess asks or tells them to do something, they are compelled to do so. Noll can’t accept this existence. She doesn’t want to be part of the cycle and yet she finds herself forced into it when someone finds The Goddess within her to love. She doesn’t want to love her man, yet feels guilt because only she will ever be able to love him. She’d feel terribly for cursing him to a masked life or to a lonely misery in the commune.

Surprising to the reader, her man isn’t keen on losing his free will either. He finds that he is the only male to feel this defiance whereas all other men are delighted to help and serve their Goddess. All other men feel no urge to resist or fight against their Goddess like her man does. What does this mean for them? I assumed that one of them would tire and “give-in” so to speak, but it is not so simple. Amy McNulty provides several surprises to the story. Some of them were such a shock I was almost as offended as Noll herself.

I couldn’t resist giving Nobody’s Goddess five stars because it held my interest, it provided unexpected challenges with surprising results, and I find myself very eager to see what is yet to come in the next book. I bought volume 2 just before writing this review, and I’m sure I’ll be done before this review goes live. 😉

*I received a copy of this ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Maybe 2.5 stars.

You know how when you type up a review and accidentally delete it before posting it, it's hard to write it again? Yeah. That's where I am. So if the words I type seem clipped and boring, that's probably why.

I've hesitated reading this book for a while because every time I read the synopsis, I thought it sounded weird and silly. (Which makes me wonder why I requested it from NetGalley. Perhaps it was in the beginning when I requested just about everything in hopes of getting something.) After reading it, I still think it's kind of weird and silly. Even so, I enjoyed reading it at times, though I can't quite figure out why. It was mostly when I was able to look past all the "goddess" stuff. I think that's the aspect of the story that was just odd to me: Every man is compelled to "love" one woman and follow her commands, and for some reason this makes her a goddess (though the only power she has is to command her man). Men have no will when it comes to love; women can choose to return their man's love, love someone they know will never return it to them, or live alone and send their man to the commune, where he will live a lonely, masked life of hard labor, subsisting on rotten leftover food from the villagers. But really, it's the whole "goddess" thing that just . . . I dunno, makes me cringe.

Noll is fine. She's neither my favorite main character nor my least favorite. She's okay. I recognize the difficult situation she is in, loving a best friend who is bound do her sister, Elfriede. But she mostly behaves admirably, although she attempts to free him (which is what leads her to the lord of the village). I don't feel drawn to Jurij like she does, so it never bothered me that he was with Elfriede. Whatever. And I wanted to like the lord, which made me feel kind of guilty because he didn't exactly appear to be the greatest person.

Overall, Nobody's Goddess felt like a man-hating, women-power book to me. In Noll's village, the women are the ones with all the power. They control what their men do, and they determine what type of life their men will have. But the village in this state is peaceful, so I suppose we're supposed to see it as more ideal than a society run by men. I say that because in an alternate/past version of Noll's village (which she visits), men are the ones in control. And they are bad. I don't even mean a little bad. I mean every terrible thing you can think of that would result from a male-dominate society exists in that village. It's awful. And the way the book is written, we are made to believe that men are naturally horrible people, that they can't even really help it. Their only shot at becoming humane is by being controlled by a woman, by having their own will basically stripped from them. And that grates on me because it's not true. (Yes, I know it's a book.) There are terrible men and terrible women. But a patriarchal society is not automatically hell, nor is a matriarchal society automatically peaceful.

The book wasn't 100% resolved, but it left me in a place where I don't feel compelled to continue the series just to finish it, which I appreciate since there are other books I'm more excited to read.

Things I don't understand:
- How did Noll get the power in the first place. It had to come from somewhere. I guess you could argue that she had it in the past because she had it in the future when she went back to the past. But that doesn't satisfy me.
- Why are all the men dark skinned with pointy ears and fiery eyes? (And why are the women's ears in the alternate/past world pointy, too?) I mean, it sounds like those eyes are pointy.
- Do genetics not exist? How is it that Noll is kind of medium brown, her father is dark brown, her mother is pale with blonde hair, and her sister is pale with blonde hair. The person who doesn't make sense to me is Elfriede.
- Explain that pool in the cavern. You know, the one Noll traveled through.

Note: A little swearing.

It was ok. The book revolves around a village where the men are forced to be completely infatuated with his "goddess" and the women of the village can chose to return that love or not. If an unloved man is looked at by another woman, he vanishes. The plot had a lot of potential, but there were places where the book moves slowly and other places that are just confusing. The book uses a time travel element to help explain why the village is the way that it is, which was an interesting plot device but added to the confusion. My biggest complaint is that the main character, Noll, was unlikable, selfish and juvenile. The whole book is an interesting view of gender roles, but it's not interesting enough for me to want to suffer through the next one.

ARC given by netgalley for an honest review.

The concept of this is absolutely brilliant and full of potential. Regardless of what anyone thinks, most stories are told from the traditional patriarchal society. Females fall in love with the males, males hold positions of power intentionally or not. This is not like that at all. In fact it is almost Amazonian in its context. The women in this story hold the power and its the males who are the emotionally vulnerable ones. That was what really struck me because it's not something I'd read before.

What killed it for me the most is the main female character, Noll. The fact that she is the female with the privilege, but MOD-GODS the entire story just ticked me off. I like all characters to be fallible whether it is physically, emotionally, or mentally. Noll didn't have that. She has her good points, and maybe this isn't her specifically, but the story it self. I hate insta-love and romantic attractions with no emotional foundation. She's like a kid wanting her favorite toy because she hasn't played with it and is angry when someone else wants to play with it. That kind of character is very annoying and doesn't evoke a sense of empathy for me. I like sure fire female characters because they break the stereotype of needing males for self-worth, and Noll has a little teeny tiny bit of it, but once she gets wrapped up in her love interest, it's basically role flip. That concept I feel will either make or brake it for some readers. I liked the concept I really did, but Noll just didn't do it for me. Everything she did made her an irredeemable character right up to the end. And what did that I think is that it was in first person so you feel Noll's thoughts and emotions a lot more potently than you would have if the story was in 3rd person.

Great concept, poorly developed characters in relation to the plot and concept. 3 stars.

I was intrigued by the exploration of gender and love in this story, and there were some interesting ideas that stuck with me and left me mulling over them long after. However, I had trouble connecting with the protagonist (some of her choices frustrated me), and ultimately I did not finish this one because of that.

Although the original idea of the book is interesting, the novel takes some twists and turns I didn't understand.

So this was a book I added on impulse to my TBR about two years ago. I then received it from NetGalley last autumn and decided that now, June 2017, it was definitely time for me to read it.

This story follows Noll, a young woman who lives in a village where all men are forced to wear masks and are destined to fall in love with one woman - their goddess. Once the men have found their goddess they will do her bidding until the day she returns their love - at which point the man may remove his mask. Noll is a bit of a tomboy, running around with the boys playing with swords (wooden sticks) instead of learning a trade, but one by one her friends find their goddesses, with Noll's best friend and crush Jurij finds his goddess in Noll's sister. Noll decides to find out why the men are forced to fall in love as they do and goes in search for the mysterious Lord of the village, believing him to be able to break the curse. She soon finds out, however, that perhaps she has more to do with this curse than she had ever thought.

I found this novel simple and enjoyable. Bits and pieces of it were quite predictable, but the writing flowed really well and made it a good read anyhow. Noll was a bit annoying at times - I really did not feel at all attached to her or her quest, but at times I was able to look past that and instead look at the story and characters as a whole, which helped. I would have liked the story to be more detailed and further developed - it might actually have been possible to extend this into a trilogy alone, because the connection with the next book feels quite loose at the moment. At least that is how I would have done it.

I feel like I should also adress the fact that I saw someone on Goodreads comment, without having read the book, that it sounded like in this novel there are only heterosexual relationships. And yes, it certainly sounds like that. However, the men in this novel are cursed to "only love one woman". Those exact words. The women are not cursed in any way and there are women who are revealed to be gay, but cannot be together due to the men being cursed to love them. So it's not an "anti-lgbt-relationships" book - the curse has caused the relationships to be heterosexual only instead of mixed.

I will most likely pick up the next book at some point, but I cannot say when that will be.

🌸 Okay, to be completely honest I picked up this book because of the cover. I know it's shallow, but look how gorgeous it is! And there's a WoC on the front which is pretty damn rare - so points for that. But. I had issues with the premise that put me off reading it. Basically each man and woman are paired up in a destiny sort of way. When the time comes he asks her to 'be his Goddess'. If she says yes, it's all hearts and flowers. If she says no, he has to wear a mask forever and neither of them can be with anyone else. I know its a vague criticism but it kinda made me feel like its the 'how do you know unless you give him a chance', women should be 'grateful' for random men's attention, 'it's her fault for turning him down' type of thing.

🗡Anyway... Once I set that aside (and quite a lot is actually dealt with in the text) I really enjoyed this story. The world-building is solid and draws you in and the plot moves along at a fairly decent pace. There's lots of plot twists and surprises here, and the book is far better than the synopsis implied.

🚺 The only gripe I really had upon finishing the story is Noll herself. The amount of time I wanted to slap that girl! It seems like everything that happens is really her own fault. She never thinks things through, is selfish and acts really spitefully towards her sister.

👹 The story felt like it wrapped up really well and would work brilliantly as a standalone, but if I find a copy of the sequel, I'd probably give it a try.

This review will go up on my blog, Foxes & Fairy Tales, on 04 Feb 2017.

Nobody’s Pawn by Amy McNulty

Love and hate power strong magic in Amy McNulty’s Nobody’s Pawn, the third book in her The Never Veil series. Noll’s village has been under a strange curse, one in which she plays a crucial role. She believes she has overcome the problem and now, determined to live life on her own terms, she accepts that she and the lord who is bound to her are better without each other. Easier said than done. When new problems arise in their land the two must work together to find the solution.

A rare fantasy novel that stars people of color, this tale of love, sacrifice and forgiveness is a charming YA love story. Be sure to read the full series, starting with Nobody’s Goddess.

Memorable moment: When Noll realizes that love doesn’t mean sacrificing freedom.

I reached up and where I expected to feel nothing, my fingers brushed against soft petals. I bent over to look at my reflection in the water. A crown fit for a queen rested atop the thick black hair I once found so difficult to tame— hair that was far longer now than I remembered. When had it grown so long? Was that part of the magic, too? I felt like it was. That it was a sign that I was no longer just nobody’s goddess or nobody’s lady— the girl who cut her hair when she wanted to be left alone. I was no longer alone, but I was nobody’s pawn. My tresses looked wild even now, but it suited the crown. It suited the woman who looked up at me.

DNF at 34%

I first heard about Amy McNulty's Nobody's Goddess is a YASH contest a year and a half ago, and I even won some swag (EEK!!) So, when I saw it on NetGalley, I know I had to have the book.

The beginning seemed pretty vague, as all beginnings go, but from the second chapter (present day) it all sort of fell apart for me.

For one, I didn't UNDERSTAND it all. Men following a woman's every command, unable to look at anyone else once they found their goddess it seemed so - DRASTIC. I mean, sure, men CAN be unfaithful but in this book their being 'worthy' had them almost mindless? I hated that in empowering women, it made men a lesser, almost slave-like species. EQUALITY EVERYONE., IS THE KEY.

Another thing I just did NOT get was the Lord's Manor/ Earthquake thing, but I accepted it as a plot quirk. When Noll, however, went there NOTHING HAPPENED? A meteor didn't crash into the village?

Which brings me to Noll, who as I saw it for FEAR of abandonment managed to convince herself that she was in love with the man who was in love with her sister. I was like her WHOLE LIFE was a tantrum that I DID NOT UNDERSTAND.

I simply couldn't go on. The book just wasn't for me.