Member Reviews

I liked Seraphina but I didn't love it. I was hesitant to read this one because I thought it would let me down. I'm so glad I picked this one up. I loved that Tess was flawed. I liked seeing her perspective of Seraphina too. Her journey was interesting all throughout.

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I was interested in this book mostly because of the cover, but I was immediately taken back by the stuff about marrying her sister which is just a few pages in. I ended up DNFing this pretty early on and spoke with my book club about it too and there's more incest type stuff from what I am told.
It's a shame because the cover is beautiful.

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Check out that cover! I don't know what it is about this cover that I love. Maybe it's the lone girl, and the dragon. Or maybe it has to do with the images within the dragon that I love. There's definitely some symbolism from the story on this cover. Unfortunately for me, the cover is the best part of this book.

This book was not the light, entertaining read I thought it would be. Instead it's a book that has a lot of dark martial, and felt emotionally heavy. It's a story that is heavily weighted down by all that Tessa has experienced in her life. I definitely was not prepared to be immersed into this dark book. Had I been a little bit more prepared, I think I would have liked it a little bit more than I did.

Having said that, there's no denying that Hartman can craft an intriguing fantasy world. What first drew me to her Seraphina series are the dragons and how well crafted the series world building is. I like the series. I like the complexity of the world building. I was looking forward to reading a new story set in a world I've come to love. Unlike that series characters, I wasn't a huge fan of Tess.

Tess was a very hard character for me to feel any sort of connection to. I appreciated that Tess isn't a fragile, perfect character. She is flawed. She deals with some horrible situations, but she is a fighter, and she keeps going. I admired her not giving up. She is a victim of a lot of wrong doings. Many are of her own fault, but some are at the hands of others. Those situations were hard to read about. Her journey had to do with her healing, and re-discovering who she is.

The biggest complaint for me in not liking this book, was how this book and Tess were written. For a book that's over 500 pages, there was way too much 'telling' vs 'showing'. Telling readers what's happening, vs showing them, at least for me, makes it incredibly hard to really connect with the story or it's characters. I am a reader who needs some sort of character and story connection, especially when reading bigger books like this. I felt like I was kept from really getting into the story, and really feeling like I could connect to Tess, like I wanted. This is the kind of book that needed more showing vs telling, in order for me to like it as much as I had excepted to.

Despite my love of fantasy and dragons, this book unfortunately was not my cup of tea. As I mentioned above, there is a lot of dark martial in this book that I wasn't prepared for, nor was Tess the relatable character I thought she would be. This book is definitely darker than the other books in the Seraphina series. I would definitely recommend checking those books out.

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I got this book off of Netgalley as an eARC.

I have mixed feelings about this book.
It has a strong female protagonist as does Seraphina, however it has the whole rape backstory, which sucks.
So the whole premise is that Tess needs to get away from her mother as she's pretty much abusive and hates Tess for being raped and getting pregnant as the religion of her mom is St. Vitt which is an analog of Christianity.
Tess then gets the opportunity to run away from home and meets up with Pathka, her childhood quigtl friend.
We then find out that quigtl can change their sex so Pathka is now male instead of the female quigtl that Tess knew. This is important as quigtl have the gender neutral pronoun 'ko' which never gets used when talking about Pathka. This really bothered me because there is a correct pronoun and it's not being used.
There's also a homeless man that Tess is horribly cruel to, just so she can have a moment of redemption getting help for him.
After she meets Pathka then the whole book is about her going after ko goal of Anathuthia. After thus it's pretty much set in arcs of what happens. She gets to a place then thing happens, gets to another place and another thing happens. That may or may not be your thing, but to me it felt like it was padding.
Overall it felt as if there was a hatred of women as it was women that seemed to be the ones hurting Tess, even inadvertently, to where she'd run to the arms of a man to seek consoling. This is kind of painful to see for a book that wants strong women. They just don't seem to support each other as much as I'd like to see.

Overall it's not a bad book, but I really wish it wouldn't have done a lot of things it did.

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I really tried to like this but it was so slow moving and relied so heavily on world building that was far too weak that I took ages to finally finish. The concept was great but the execution left much to be desired.

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The plot meanders, the main character is unlikable, and it's nearly incomprehensible if you hadn't read the other books first. And no dragons. I gave up at the 40% mark.

*ARC via netgalley*

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This one really hit me in the gut. Tess's journey is such a thoughtful event, and Tess's realizations about herself, her life, consent, pleasure, and her place in the world are beautiful.

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Hartman’s return to Seraphina’s world comes in the form of a girl who is out on a journey to run away from her past. Tess, Seraphina’s half-sister (who was introduced in Seraphina ) has had a hard childhood, especially after Seraphina’s outing as a half-dragon caused their family take a dip in social standing and assets. She has been a somewhat rebellious wild child, but she still always stuck to her mother’s exhortations to remain chaste/pure/virginal/all-that-crap. When a mistake on her part (which honestly, I don’t consider her mistake but a betrayal of her trust) leads to her being ‘unsuitable for marriage’, her options get limited to being left at a nunnery, she dons male attire and runs away. On the way, she finds her old childhood quigutl friend, and together they embark on a journey to uncover one of dragonkind’s mysteries.

At first, I thought the book would merely be a fast-paced adventure through the different regions. Seraphina had that in Shadow Scale, yes, but I assumed maybe a cross-dressing girl with a dragon would have a wholly different adventure. And it is a different adventure, yes, but not just because of what the purpose is. This book takes us on a metaphorical journey of healing for Tess, who has been brought up abused. The theme of the story is about rape culture, and how Tess, despite being a victim in the situation, assumed all the blame and the guilt for it. There is a lot of slut-shaming going on in the novel, and a lot of it is internalized misogyny for Tess, too, because she has been brought up to believe that the fault will lie with her. All of these were thanks to those ridiculous saints and the people like Tess’s mother who take those beliefs too far. As the story progresses and as she meets different people and has different experiences, she starts to let go of that toxicity in her life, to be free from the guilt pressed down upon her from her family.

She’d never seen any divine plan, unless the plan was to saddle her with guilt and self-loathing.

Along with her in the journey is Pathka, who is a species called quigutl. These dragonkin were given a minor role in Shadow Scale, but here we have a major secondary character who has been a friend to Tess from her childhood. An interesting addition is that Hartman made all the quigutl genderfluid, or at least capable of changing their gender, which is why the Pathka of Tess’ childhood is female, while the one in the present is male. He has had a hatchling (incidentally, due to rape) called Kikiu, and the relationship between them and the one Tess has with her own mother is often paralleled. Pathka is on a pilgrimage of sorts, and Tess has a spiritual awakening in the book; there is a lot of pain involved in both instances. Tess’s arc with another character (from the original books) is also a significant part of her healing, and lets her know she can have love and not be shamed for it. However, it also lets her proceed forward with living for something, and to look forward to the next big adventure. (I still want her to kick a certain person in the unmentionables, though)

She still held sorrows, but she was not made of them. Her life was not a tragedy. It was history, and it was hers.

Since this is a spin-off in the Seraphina universe, she does make an appearance in this book (and so does Glisselda, but not Kiggs sadly) on more than one occasion, allowing the sisters to build a relationship that was not possible in their childhood. At first, Tess is quite resentful of Seraphina, mostly because of the downfall of their family, but also because Seraphina’s status as a Saint protects her from the consequences of what would be disastrous to Tess in the same circumstances. They had a difficult and antagonistic relationship in childhood, but I love how Seraphina loves and protects Tess, in her own way, during this book. Another weird thing was how Tess sees Seraphina’s quiet nature as her dragon side, when we know (or if you have read Seraphina) it is from her lonely childhood. And for those who wanted a ‘after the ending’ story for Seraphina will also find a delightful surprise in this book.

The pacing of the story is slow, but even so builds a beautiful narrative arc tracing her journey through various regions and in various roles. Her desperation, her grief, her guilt, her adventurous spirit, the loss of her innocence, the path to happiness – all are played out in the novel with heartfelt emotional progression. It is a novel that deals with heavy and dark topics, but also has bursts of hilarity in the scenes and the interactions between the characters. Tess is an extremely snarky protagonist, and initially she may come across as rude and unlikeable (especially for hardcore Seraphina fans who will bristle at Tess’ comments on her) but by the end, you can’t help but love her personality and spunk. There are some hilarious inside jokes and moments of levity to round out the experience for the reader.

In short, it combines the emotional themes of a contemporary novel and puts it in a fantasy universe, thus combining adventure in a character-driven setting.

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Wish I had read Seraphina, but as I hadn't I didn't feel comfortable reading this without that prior reference. Without that point I'm going to be fair to this book and give it 3 stars

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Don't judge a book by its cover well guess what I did!!! How could I not pick this book when it has a dragon heading straight down! The cover is the best and I am sorry to say that all this book has going for it I DNF at 51% I just could connect to any of the characters and not ONE DRAGON was in the story!!!!!!


My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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❝ "Wherever you are is my home, always. Us against the world." ❞

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Let me start by saying that I came into Tess of the Road not knowing very much about the world, its characters, or the backstory. One thing I liked right away was that we didn't get any big info-dumps regarding the author's other series. I didn't feel like I needed to have read Seraphina before reading this book, which was good.

Unfortunately, because of the big time gap between the first chapter (when Tess is very young) and the next chapter (when Tess is practically an adult) I suddenly felt like I was missing a lot of information. Things had definitely happened between the two points. All the tension between Tess and her family and the mystery of what this sore spot created a bit of unnecessary confusion. At the same time, it had me glued to every page trying to get clues about what had happened to make Tess fall so far out of favor.

The beginning of the book was more centered around family tensions. Tess's relationship with her mother was especially toxic. I felt for Tess when her mother was constantly criticizing her and making her feel like she was just in the way. I sympathized with her and hated how abusive her mother was. I was also frustrated with how her father seemed very passive and didn't take on much of an active role. It seemed that despite the father's mistakes it was really Tess who paid for his sins. She was the family punching bag, always being picked on and blamed.

And in the middle of all this chaos, Tess relied upon her twin, Jeanne. It was always them "against the world".  Jeanne was the ideal child, doted upon, favored, and loved and Tess took it upon herself to shelter Jeanne from the worst the world had to offer. She focused her whole life on helping Jeanne navigate life, helping her avoid her own mistakes, ensuring her a good future. I felt like we didn't really get to know Jeanne very well. She was always in control of her emotions, proper, and helpful.

It's only after other events transpire that Tess finds herself at a crossroads. She can keep trying to earn her family's acceptance or she can run away and try to carve her own future. One Tess decides to start over on the road her path leads her to an old childhood friend, Pathka, and soon they begin an adventure to finds the world's serpents.

❝ "The world is surprisingly hard to destroy," said Pathka gently. "Whereas saving it can be done a bit at a time [...]" ❞

In general, I found Tess's character to be interesting. She abused alcohol as a way to deal with her family and her past mistakes, she carried a lot of guilt and remorse, and she struggled to accept herself. I think her character was a mess emotionally and mentally, but she was trying. Tess seemed to be caught between wanting to be good daughter her family expected and the incorrigible troublemaker everyone told her she was.

At the same time, however, it wasn't enough to really get me to fall in love with the book. Tess had some minor adventures while on the road. With this book having dragons I was expecting more action and adventure, but really Tess of the Road is more of Tess's personal journey of self-acceptance. It dealt with some very adult topics like being a good mother, alcoholism, verbal abuse, losing a child, and rape. It didn't read like a YA at times which was neither good nor bad, just something to be aware of. 

The journey to find the world's serpents really felt like an aside/background to the book. Tess's issues always took precedence over everything else. I was expecting the fantasy elements to take more of an active role in the story besides just the characters' races/species or the background but that wasn't the case in this book. Really, the setting could have been anywhere else with all human characters and the story could go on just the same with Tess on the road. For it being in the fantasy genre I was kind of disappointed on that end.

Overall, I think this book had an interesting character and premise, but it just didn't deliver on the fantasy end. 

Tess of the Road was released just last month on February 27th so if you're interested go pick up a copy!

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I wish I'd known that this was related to Rachel Hartman's other books. It's not that I didn't understand what was going on, but I probably would have appreciated the references more if I had read the other books.

So <i>Tess of the Road</i> is a good story. Not a great story, but a good one. Tess as a character is pretty relatable, especially if you grew up in a religious family or area. She's not very likable in the sense that most main characters are. There is a lot of internal misogyny that was painful to read, and this is definitely one of those books where I wanted to reach through the pages and smack a bunch of people. And while Tess does grow as a character, she never becomes particularly likable, and that's okay, because she doesn't have to be. She never turns into the quintessential YA heroine, and that's okay, too, because normal people exist.

The plot is a little meandering, but I imagine that's intentional, as Tess is lost and trying to find somewhere she fits in. I'm not sure how I feel about the abruptness of the ending, but as it seems as though this is the first in a series, I suppose I can excuse that. The story is messy, because Tess is messy. It deals with some heavy subjects, and I cried several times. YA books never feel particularly "young" to me, but this one didn't feel like YA simply because of the subject matter.

One thing that I think was well done was Tess's relationship with Will. At the beginning of the book, you think it was one way, and then by the time you get to the end, you realize you were completely wrong. (At least I was. This probably depends on your own preconceptions. Maybe other people are more jaded and called it right away.) I'm not usually a fan of revealing information a little bit at a time, but in this case I think it worked well.

All in all, I didn't dislike the book, but I don't know if I'll continue on with the series. A character doesn't have to be likable to be compelling, but I have to like the character to care about what happens to them, and as it is, I'm okay with Tess's story ending here.

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FIRST: O-M-G this cover might be my favourite, I love it a lot and can’t take my eyes off of it.

I have conflicted feelings about Tess of the Road so please indugle me and excuse me if this all comes a little bit disjointed. I had quite a rocky start with this novel and there are several reasons for that.
I still want to say up here that ultimately, seeing where the author was going with this all, I was won over by what this book turned out to be.
The main themes of the novel are teen pregnancy, being a girl in a very mysogynistic fantasy world, trauma, healing through traveling. Most of all, this novel tackles rape culture.

The first thing that bothered me was that while I tried, I couldn’t connect to Tess in the beginning. I still feel bitter about the way Seraphina was portrayed but I cannot say I didn’t like Tess because she’s a very complex character, one we so rarely find in YA fantasy: a girl who made many mistakes, a girl with a giant heart and conscience, who’s trying to do good and fight against what she’s been taught. In her journey, Tess will grow a lot and will be confronted to her prejudiced views and the way it made her see herself, she will learn from that, often in a hard way.

I do understand how interesting it is that a beloved main character from a previous book is seen on a totally different light here, to see that the character you were rooting for is not the same person in another’s eyes. But it made for a difficult realisation.

For the writing, I didn’t love the many flashbacks and the way some sort of reveal on something everyone could guess early on is revealed, it was a bit annoying. I understand it is to stick to Tess’s state of mind and slow coming to term with what happened; but it just made the reveal drag on and I was looking forward for the story to really start, the set up is a bit long but also necessary? *I am still confused about my feelings to be honest*

Another important thing about Tess is that she’s a twin. At first it feels like she’s the “bad” one and her sister’s the good one, which from what I read is a trope frown upon by real twins. But it is also something that the story tackles later on.

Tess is one of these characters that I couldn’t help but like when I began to understand her better. Her love of animals and especially of megafauna was heart warming. She is a very passionate person and that’s the main point that made me warm up to her.

I also loved the conversation about linguistics and the difficulty of translation between two languages and cultures that have such different concepts.

The book addresses a lot of very important subjects, like the matter of periods while traveling in a medieval-fantasy world, contraception, masturbation, triggers, prostitution, genders and sexualities.

In the end, most of my first issues with the novel were addressed, and the things that were a matter of personnal opinion were also narrative choices that I understood to some degress. But I am sadden at how late some things were addressed or undone, because I could have stopped reading anytime and not known what treasure this book was holding.

While it took its sweet time to get there, I’m glad I decided to give this book a chance. In a way that book is like Tess herself, hard to get around at first, full of contradictions and off-putting, but impossible de hate. Still, Tess and the novel itself grew on me and won me over, despite my first disapproval and disappointment. I’m not forgetting the things that I didn’t like, but if at the beginning I thought the bad outweighed the good, in the end I can say the good outweighed the bad and I just cannot regret reading this.

This novel begs a bit of faith from the reader, and shouldn’t expect it, but I gave it and was rewarded for it. Now I can only tell fellow readers that I took the leap and can vouch in some ways that this book isn’t entirely terrible and can even be worth the read if you are ready for the punch it’ll deliver to your feelings and expectations. You might end up disappointed if you enter this book looking for action, adventure and dragons. This is more of an internal journey, a psychological and hard look at the society of this medieval fantasy world but also at our own.

So yeah, the novel relies too heavily on the reader’s trust and faith, it is a very draining novel, not a light read at all, but still an important one.

A quick last thing: I read Seraphina but not not Shadow Scale, and I feel I should have because as much as this book tries to stand on its own and to remind the reader really quick of the political situation and previous events, it’s not always very clear and I’m sure I would have enjoyed some things way more.

So with the accurate warnings beforehand, this book could do a lot of good. But think of the warnings before recommending this book because the subjects are so so heavy and could be dangerously triggering to some readers.

(I still feel like I could go on and on discussing this book but this is already WAY too long I’ll stop here!)

Content warnings: suicidal ideation/planning, rape, pregnancy/delivery, miscarriage, slut-shaming, deaths
To be honest I might even be forgetting some, I’d recommend checking other reviews just in case.

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Holy cow, guys. I had forgotten how amazing Rachel Hartman's writing is and how much I love her world here in Goredd. Well, I love the stories about it. I would never ever want to live in that world and Tess's story underscores the terrible way women are treated in Goredd (an echo of women in my culture). Tess explores her own pain and history as she has adventures along the road. She learns what those of who have traveled know, that most people are kind and helpful. She learns who she really is and who she wants to be while she's out on the road. I want to give this book to every girl who has ever been told that she is fundamentally bad or has been taught self-loathing for her 'original sin.' Tess teaches us to forgive ourselves, and in the post-"#metoo world, that's an important lesson for all.

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I did not completely hate this book but was fooled by the cover. I wanted a tremendous amount of dragons and fighting and a epic high fantasy. Instead, I found the MC to be tedious and NO DRAGONS WHATSOEVER! From the disaster she causes at her sister’s wedding to her pretending to be the misunderstood victim for the rest of the book. I believe that she acts out to get attention and that she chooses to put herself into the situations that make her seem to be “misunderstood”.
I struggled to finish this book because the author kept going off on random tangents and adding so much fluff that the storyline suffered more for the additional wording. The reader must undergo so many dark undertones and constant chaos that the story becomes too heavy of a read to enjoy. Yes, I believe that the author has the ability to spin a fantastic tale and to build worlds that are viable. No, I do not believe that she achieved that with Tess.
It takes a huge toll on me to DNF a book so I tried to start and restart this book too many times. I eventually gave up and called it a lost cause. Just because this book is not for me, does not mean that I would sway anyone from reading Tess. I would encourage those who love a story that supports full-on feminism.
The only that I even remote enjoyed about this book was the cover and it was a complete LIE! I do not understand why there was a dragon simmering with the night sky on it? Unless Tess thinks that she is some type of dragon for being rogue, disconnected from the world, and constantly the center of controversy? That being said, I am highly disappointed that I was misled into wanting this book because of the cover and the misleading blurb!
I do appreciate Netgalley and Random House Children’s Publishing company for allowing me access to the book for this review. I apologize that the book was not for me and that I cannot say I enjoyed it.

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Tess of the Road was an interesting read. Tess is a little weird, a little damanged, and a lot drunk. I am not a big fan of drinking and ya character. But it is a rich fantasy world and any fantasy lover should give Tess a shot.

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Lovely! Lots of nods to Seraphina but not so much that you feel lost if it's been a while (4 years or so for me!). Tess grows up so much throughout this book, and it's interesting to see more of the quigtl and corners of the world that Seraphina didn't explore. It's also just so adorable and empowering at the same time, with so many interesting, complicated women who help each other in unexpected ways.

Full disclosure I read this book in nearly one sitting on an airplane, months ago, so the details are a little fuzzy. I do remember that it took me a while before I warmed up to this book. Tess is not a particularly likeable heroine at first - she's sharp-tongued, proud, and defies expectations of how a woman should act (which I loved) but she's also kind of selfish and stubborn in a less-than-endearing way. She's childish, petulant, and quite flawed, but she's also the most real main character I've read about in a while.

Tess lives in an almost Puritanical world, with strict rules about how women should act and what their role is. There's so much repression in this world, so it's only natural that Tess has to deal with some repressed traumatic memories. An interesting foil to how the human women are treated in this world are the dragon women, including Seraphina. The dragons don't have to follow human rules, and sometimes they find human customs completely ridiculous. There are also nuns and villagers and even a courtesan who show Tess that there are more ways to live as a woman in this world than the restricted existence her family expects her to lead.

This is one of those "journey" books, both literally and metaphorically. Tess pulls on some boots and walks, hoping to get somewhere far away from home where she can live freely. Her experiences along the way help her grow tremendously, and she eventually deals with the trauma of her painful past. The author wrote this excellent article about how this book was an emotional autobiography for her, focusing heavily on shame and healing. There are lots of metaphors for both ideas throughout this story, and it truly is an incredibly journey to share with the main characters.

I would definitely recommend giving this book a read, even if you haven't read Seraphina.

A free e-ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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I was unaware that this was a companion novel to Seraphina prior to request, so there was some background information I just wasn't privy to. It was still enjoyable enough to get through the book, but I think it would've been better had I read Seraphina.

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Tess of the Road was a decent expansion of the world Rachel Hartman first showed us in her Seraphina duology. In Seraphina and Shadow Scale, we were given a world of mathematical dragons and the humans who were prejudiced against them, though both societies were held together with a peace treaty. Eventually, war began amongst them again and our heroine discovered a lot about herself and society. I really loved the political world building in that original duology, and also came to love the characters themselves. If you haven't read that duology yet, then you should.

This book is set in the same world as Seraphina, but follows Tess, Seraphina's younger half-sister. You don't have to have read the duology to enjoy it, I don't think, but it would definitely help you envision the world a bit better. Tess is kind of a troublemaker, and she doesn't want to be the prim and proper lady-in-waiting that her twin sister is. She's had some trouble in the past (which is revealed slowly throughout) and has pretty much been relegated to the black sheep of the family and no longer feels as though she has any agency in her own life. After making a mess at a large social gathering, she takes to the road, along with a quigutl (think a mini-dragon cousin--who dragons don't like). Their adventures are what make up the bulk of the story.

What I really liked about this book was that it was socially conscious fantasy. It had a lot to say about women and how we move through the world, and the things we must do to keep ourselves safe. Tess's story is deeply rooted in these issues, and they're such an important thing to cover in our current moment. Not only does it show how women must take care when interacting with men, but it also shows how society and even those we love can contribute to a culture of silence and blame surrounding things like sexual assault (Trigger warnings!).

I've also seen a lot of reviewers say that Tess is unlikeable, and I think it's great to have protagonists who are, but I didn't find her unlikeable myself. Personally, I found her intriguing and real, and I feel like there's so much more to unpack in her character that I really hope there are future installments of her story. She doesn't always make the best choices, but who does? In fact, at times in the story, I just tried to will her from doing the things I could tell she was about to do, but we all have to make our mistakes. Tess was very human and I love having characters like that. No one is perfect, and I don't need my book characters to be either.

Finally, while I enjoyed this book, there were a few parts that lagged and sometimes I felt like it could have picked up the pace just a teensy bit more. I did still read it in two days, though, so take that as you will. Also, while the reader gets some glimpses of Seraphina, I really would have loved more involvement with her and other characters from her story...but mainly because I miss them (honestly don't think it would've worked if they were in it a lot more). It does seem like there are some openings for them to be more involved in the future, though. Overall, this was a pretty strong fantasy story with great coming of age elements, but also some great social commentary on the role of women in our world (trigger warnings for sexual assault).

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Right away I loved the folk tale feel of this story. It pulled me in and felt classic and fresh all at once. As a Seraphina fan I was eagerly awaiting my chance to dive into this story. But to be clear, while Tess is set in the same world, all of the characters are new and this story feels much heavier and darker.
There is so much to love about this story. Hartman's writing is, as always, on point. This book is not for the reluctant reader though because the prose and the fantastical elements are not simple or easy, which isn't a good or bad thing, just something I feel should be mentioned in a review for young readers.
The messages in this book are quite mature, but not ones children shouldn't be aware of. I think readers of all ages will root for Tess in all of her complexity and vulnerability, and get lost in her quest and adventure. Tess grows as a character and like any good middle grade protagonist, she needs to discover her strengths and weaknesses and put them together to become the person she was meant to be.
I love this world and this new important story that has been told within it.

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