I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I have a little bit of mixed feelings about this book. The way the world was desgin was very well done and I could picture it in my head easily. The characters were well done for the most part. I am not really sure about Faith. She has her moments but she does a lot of complaining and pushing those away who are trying to help her. The idea behind the book was fun and drove the story forward.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the author for this partnership.

I love the covers of the books in this series.

There is Faith who has drawn up a list of rules to respect: already everything that has to do with technology does not work, no need for electricity when magic is used, trust no one and especially when you are told that you are the harbinger* believe the (* omen or sign). Faith is in her fifth year at the academy and wants to join the division to follow in her mother's footsteps. She's the first harbinger woman and she's going to have to fight a dragon.

I immediately hooked on this magnificent series with its magnificent covers, the story is so captivating and full of suspense and twists, the characters so endearing. I love the author's pen so addictive, too eager for this series to come out in a full paperback edition.

I enjoy this book. I love faith. She is a very smart girl. I have the different relationship drama! Lol. But the story was slow for me. But overall it was a good book. I would recommend for a quick reading.

Rating 4/5

A gift in gender role swapping for YA readers. This surprising debut from new author Candace Wondrak hits all the high points of a fantasy while keeping it in line with for its audience. Sexy and humorous, fun and delightful. Superb entrance into this new world crafted with imagination and full of wonder. YA readers are sure to enjoy Faith's sassiness and the haunting of her males.

I really enjoyed this book. I love the world. I am looking forward to watching the characters grow.

Wow, what an amazing new Fantasy. I'm the first to admit that I'm not a fan of books that get tied down with more sex than story but that is 100% not the case with The Harbinger. Fun, sassy and simply riveting, this was one of the best new author's and series I checked out this year! I did not want this novel to end! I wanted more of Wondrak's Second World, I wanted more of the quirky characters and the what ifs that I know will be coming and I just can't wait to have them all answered. This book stuck with me long after I closed this storytelling and caused a bit of a book hangover, making me wonder what to read next.

I received this ARC copy of The Harbinger from Candace Wondrak. This is my honest and voluntary review. The Harbinger is set for publication Nov 5, 2018.

My Rating: 5 stars
Written by: Candace Wondrak
Print Length: 175 pages
Publication Date: November 5, 2018
Genre: Romantic Fantasy

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Harbinger-Reve...

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Set in a high fantasy world, this is a fast-paced story with much more than just romance.



Faith is a bit of a trouble-maker. As a pretty successful student at the Academy, she's on the right track to achieving her dreams of joining the Division one day and helping to keep smugglers at bay. But she's not exactly patient and oversteps the rules more often than she should, especially since her mother holds a very high position at the Academy. A field trip to another world, the Second, is supposed to help broaden her and her classmates understanding of the other realm, but instead, she finds herself caught up in a battle and possibly a war.



This is advertised as a slow burning reverse harem, and it is exactly that. Faith does have a potential love interest in this first book, but the relationship remains in a solid 'potential' area, keeping the romance at a very slow burner pace. I appreciated that. Faith isn't in this for romance. She isn't even really interested in becoming a hero or anything like that either. She has her goals already set and that is as a smuggler-snatcher. So when she suddenly finds herself and her friends victim to an attach and abduction, which ends with her being dibbed as the Harbinger, a type of re-generating savior to the elfs and other creatures of the Second, she's got enough on her hands to contend with.



Faith has an irritating personality, and that did turn me off on her quite a bit. She's snarky, arrogant, stupid and simply loud-mouthed. And she doesn't have the talent or extreme abilities to have the right to act better than anybody else. She's not at home in her own skin, and acts out. And this makes her hard to like. But she grew on my a little as the book progressed. At the end, she still isn't exactly wonderful as far as characters go, but there is a tiny bit of improvement. If this carries through the entire series, the character arc will be worth it.



Friends of epic fantasy are going to feel more at home than fans of paranormal or more urban fantasy tales. The world of the elves is rich and holds the high fantasy feel—something I loved. It snuggled a little strangely with Faith and her attitude, but in general, it makes for an intriguing mix...one high fantasy friends will appreciate.



And back to the romance—this first love interest, which is centered on in the first book, is definitely a building relationship and has absolutely none of the love-at-first-sight. There is a lot of trust to be built. And thanks to Faith's over-bearing personality, the 'sparky' scenes hit with awkwardness. It's not clear why the elf is drawn to her a little bit (because it isn't coming across as a tidal wave either). Yet, this odd romance fits the story and characters' quirky attributes better than a smoother romance would.



As to the harem, the last chapters finally give glimpses at the men it might include and hints at a direction the adventure could be going. But there are so many possibilities open and huge paths to be traveled before a real harem is underway, that it's hard to say exactly what adventures still await Faith. In any case, I'm curious to see what happens next and wonder if the next book will have me rooting for Faith more or not.

DNF @ 40%. Faith was without a doubt the most unlikeable hero ever. She is a *itch. She's supposed to be 18 but acts like a bratty 13 y/o. She is selfish, narcissistic, and rude. Sure we all love a flawed hero, but you still have to root for them, and instead I was hoping she'd be killed off.

Solid 3/5 stars

To start off, I'd like to say that I really loved A Mark Unwilling by this same author. I was actually told by the author that The Harbinger "is a totally different monster" compared to a Mark Unwilling. I was actually very interested in the premise of this book, but am sad to say that I was a bit disappointed. While the book went through very quickly and easy to follow, I felt that it just lacked the charm that I was expecting to see. It just fell flat to me in both the world setting, characters, the romance etc. I believe that more improvements could be made, but it just didn't catch my attention. I didn't feel swept away by the story most of the time. It just felt very plain. While some aspects I liked, such as the main characters wittiness and the way she holds herself up and a few other minor characters, this just didn't meet my expectations. I also understand that the harem aspect won't come into play more until next installment, but I can't see myself coming back right away to see how it turns out. It was just plain to me and I'm so sad I didn't like it more than I did.

These opinions are completely my own and are in no way influenced by anything outside myself. ARC received for free by the publisher through NetGalley.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Beware there are spoilers ahead.

To start, I found the main character (Faith) to be obnoxious and not in an endearing way. She is so focused on herself that she ignores everything that doesn't directly influence her which is dangerous considering the line of work she has chosen. Also she unfortunately falls into the trope of "I'm obviously beautiful but I don't see it" which arguably, maybe no one has been interested in you because you're a brat.

Then there is a slow burn aspect of this novel. I love a slow burn. Give me three hundred pages of smoldering interest capped off with a kiss, I'm into it. With this novel, Faith kisses two different guys or different species within twenty pages? For a manuscript that is only 130-ish pages long I wouldn't really call that a slow burn. No, there wasn't intercourse (fun fact the teenage characters are legal, but just barely) but the fact there was any physical contact at all sort of kills the slow burn vibe.

To cap it all off, it felt as is huge chunks of time were just skipped entirely. No one really got to know each other and then suddenly they were into each other. There's a prophecy but then it seems to be completely unknown to the human side of the equation even though it is SUPER IMPORTANT.

The idea for this book was good. I think it has a lot of potential but it needs a different set of eyes. It sort of felt that it was a first draft that needed to be fleshed out a little more. Would I give this author another shot? Yes. Maybe this was just the wrong books for me to start with.

I’m sorry to say this was a DNF for me. I had been so exited to read this book. It had sounded so exiting!

The main reason I didn’t finish this book was Faith. I understand that for this book to work she needed to be rebellious and untrusting. Saying that, I feel Faith went past rebellious and was more of a juvenile delinquent. I found this character unrelated and at times quite annoying.

Something I think would improve this book would be the writing style. Faith might be more relatable if it was in her perspective. It would be more personal.

This book was pretty messy. There were changes in PoV and time that came with almost no warning and very little preparation for the reader. Are they dreams or memories? It's never quite clear. Additionally, the descriptions need work since I often found myself having to re-read sections and still couldn't figure out what happened. Eventually, I just stopped trying to understand the action sequences since they just never made sense.
There was a ton of time spent on setting up the Fae land and then the last third of the book just jammed in a whole bunch of other stuff without any set-up at all.
Not interested in reading the next one. Wish I could get back the time I spent on this one.

Thank you to Xpresso Book Tours for the arc of this book.
This was an ok read for me, I liked the concept of the portals between the worlds,but I did struggle to finish the book, just really wasn’t my cup of tea.

My review in three words: I want more!

At first, I was a little confused with the plot but since it was a Reverse harem fantasy, I thought I would enjoy reading it. As I hoped, I ended up really liking The Harbinger especially once we met Jag (the flirty Malus).

In this book, we follow Faith, a human girl who wishes to join the Division. She lives with her grandmother since her mother is the Director of the Academy and is more focused on her job than raising her daughter. I loved her grandmother, she was so sweet and funny.

Faith is the kind of girl getting ahead of herself and she gets in trouble more often than not. And because of that, she ends up having to follow Light, an elf who hates humans, for a week to learn what the hunter has to teach her and three boys of her class. Except nothing really goes as planned and Faith gets more involved in this world (called the Second) than she expected.

I thought the plot was interesting and as for the characters and the romance, I'm excited to see where the story goes. However, this book feels like an introduction to a longer story so it's probably why we only meet Jag (and Camden) near the end. I didn't expect that but I can't wait to see how their relationship(s) develop even though they only just met.

I have no idea when the next book is coming out so if you do, please let me know as I would love to read the next one.


Thank you to the author, publisher & Netgalley for letting me read and review this book in advance.

I feel bad for DNFing this but I couldn't really take it any more.

The writing is oddly stilted, with some grammatical mistakes - notably, the omission of the pluperfect tense, which is sadly common with indie authors and sometimes even traditionally published ones. 3rd person really didn't help the writing flow at all.

Faith was sometimes funny but mostly annoying, and there was no sexual tension to speak of. I've given it 2 stars because probably other people will be able to focus on the humour and get past the writing style, but this one wasn't for me.