• Author: Sarah Beth Durst
• Series: Standalone
• Genre: Fantasy/Magic Realism
• No. of pages: 290
• Date read: 07/01/19 – 12/01/19 (DNFed at page 172)
• Rating: 1 star

My first DNF of 2019! To put in context, I only dnfed one book in 2018, The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. We are in the middle of January. It is the 2nd book I have read this year. I have already dnfed it.

I read this as part of a read-along with the company, Fairyloot, who sell subscription boxes for books. I was excited to participate in the read-along but I don’t think I will participate in the next one, I prefer to read at my own pace. The curators of Fairyloot obviously hyped up the book, the premise sounded so cool who wouldn’t want to hype up the book. But subsequently, I went in with really high expectations which weren’t met at all! I have still purchased 2 more boxes from Fairyloot and will continue to do so as I personally loved the other items that came with the box.

Plot: Sky Hawkins is a wyvern. A person who could turn into a dragon and poscess the abilities of a dragon. Her ancestors were exiled from their home and forced to live on earth. Like dragons from myth and literature, wyverns like to hoard gold and subsequently these families are very rich. The way they get their gold is simple… they steal it. The story starts with Sky who’s mother disappears after a failed heist and the story follows her trying to uncover why and where her mother has disappeared to.

POSITIVES:

I always like to start off positive and this book did have some positives.

The setting is our modern world. What I liked seeing was magic and technology mixing. I liked seeing how the wyverns have adapted with technology. I liked seeing magic and technolgly working togehter, how magic helps enhance the technology. I thought that was smart and fun to read about.

The mystery of where Sky’s mother disappeared to was really intriguing and kept me going after each chapter. I just wanted to know what happened to her. Was she locked up? Has she been tortured? Did she choose to leave? I had so many questions and each chapter more pieces were added to her disappearance and I was really excited to see what happened to her. That being said you find out where she goes halfway through the story and because that was the main draw of why I continued to read the book I subsequently had no incentive to continue the story.

I really liked learning about the lore, myth and history behind the wyverns. Everytime Sky mentioned something about their meetings known as “Reckonings”, the rules they must follow, the hierarchy, the powers. It really interested me.

My favourite character was Gabriela, Sky’s human friend. She was the sweetest person who I related to a little bit in the fact that she wanted so much more to life and wanted adventure. She just was a little ball of sunshine.

NEGATIVES:

My main problem with this book is the writing.

The writing to me was very cringey. I can’t explain what it is about the wiritng but it felt very young YA. Someone said she felt it read like fanfiction! The main point is the writing ended up ruining parts of the book that could have been good.

I think Sky, the main character, could have been a really cool, empowering female character but reading from her perspective was annoying and she just came across as a spoilt brat so I couldn’t connect with her whatsoever! Durst tried to make it out that Sky was really self-aware with the fact that she was spoilt but to me it didn’t help make Sky’s character likeable, it actually made her worse. It was disappointing because I love a powerful female character.

The first half of the book felt rushed. It felt like the writer was just trying to get to the second half of the book and get to the plot twist. Some of the best parts of heist movies is watching the training and the execution of the heist unfold but in this story, we get a very short training section, which didn’t have much training in, and then suddenly its the heist which started and ended within one chapter. It was very lacklustre and not developed at all.

The romance was not good. I didn’t care whether Ryan and Sky got back together. I think Ryan was a lovely character but because I didn’t like Sky and the writing surrounding their relationship was cringey. I didn’t want to continue reading about their relationship. It felt out of place sometimes as this is marketed as a heist book but Durst spent more time focusing on their relationship than actually developing the writing of the heist!

The problem with the book was the plot points were really cool and could have wowed me I just don’t think it was executed in the right way.