The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine – Book Review

The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine

Skies, that was a good book.

For those of you that haven’t read it, you’ll understand that reference when you do 🙂

So it took me a while to read this. I made a note to myself when I got to chapter 13 that it was taking me a while to get through this one. It’s well written and I actually found the dialogue to be pretty funny, but the whole time I felt like I was waiting for the actual hunting of Snow White (Lorelai, in this version) to go down. Also, it always takes me a while to get into a book written in third person. Because this novel was written from multiple POVs (points of views), and typically fairy tales are in third person, I gave it a pass. Also because it was written by C.J. Redwine I was obviously going read it. And I live for fairy tale retellings. With that being said, I found the characters to be really intriguing, my favourites being the main character’s brother, Leo, and her bird, Sasha. Yes, her bird. A gyrfalcon to be exact. And obviously I loved the main characters, Lorelai and Kol.

The first sentence I wrote up there and that last paragraph don’t seem to coincide with each other. Here’s why. THE BOOK GOT REALLY, REALLY GOOD. But I’m going to come back to how good it was after I type out the synopsis so you lovely readers actually know what the heck I’m talking about.

You can skim through this or skip it entirely. If you haven’t read the book though, you should read it 🙂

 

Lorelai Diederich, crown princess and fugitive at large, has one mission: to kill the wicked queen who took both the Ravenspire throne and the life of her father. To do that, Lorelai needs to use the one weapon she and Queen Irina have in common –magic. She’ll have to be stronger, faster, and more powerful than Irina, the most dangerous sorceress Ravenspire has ever seen.

In the neighboring kingdom of Eldr, when Prince Kol’s father and older brother are killed by an invading army of magic wielding ogres, the second-born prince is suddenly given the responsibility of saving his kingdom. To do that, Kol needs magic –and the only way to get is to make a deal with the queen of Ravenspire, promise to become her personal huntsman… and bring her Lorelai’s heart.

But Lorelai is nothing like Kol expected –beautiful, fierce and unstoppable –and despite Irina’s dark magic, Lorelai is drawn in by the passionate and troubled king. Fighting to stay one step ahead of the dragon huntsman –who she likes far more than she should –Lorelai does everything in her power to ruin the wicked queen. But Irina isn’t going down without a fight, and her final move may cost the princess the one thing she still has left to lose.

 

The growing friendship and romance between Lorelai and Kol was really sweet and not cheesy like some books. I found I was smiling to myself a lot while I read this one. That’s something I really admire within C.J’s writing. She has a way of introducing you to characters and quickly giving you an understanding of the relationships between them. You really feel like you know them and can relate. I really enjoyed the relationship between Lorelai and her brother, Leo, as well as the sort of father/daughter relationship between Lorelai and Gabril, the man that raised them. The funny banter between the siblings was always fun to read. Something I was pleasantly surprised with was the creative way that Lorelai communicated with some of the other characters. She had the ability to talk to people and animals in her head, so she had funny conversations with them that other people couldn’t hear. Which was pretty great when it was happening between Lorelai and Kol, because they would talk privately and it was cute 🙂

This novel was intense, and every chapter I was wondering if someone was going to die. Queen Irina was ruthless and it showed when all she wanted was Lorelai’s heart brought to her. The way the magic flowed through the land and the people was interesting, and the brutal magic that was implemented to defeat Lorelai was crazy and intense. This book was great and if you like fairy tale retellings you should read it 🙂

Sorry if I made you feel like you didn’t want to read this because of the slow beginning, but I seriously overlooked that when I finished it because it got so good after!

I’m rating this novel 4.5/5!

Thanks for reading, and please comment if you’ve read the book 🙂

Also, The fifth and final book in The Selection series by Kiera Cass, titled The Crown, is coming out on May 3rd, 2016! And I am currently reading A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray, so a review should be out in a couple of weeks!