Did someone say an arranged marriage to a morally gray Prince plus magical crows? Sign me up!!!

I loved how this book kicked off with an awesome prologue that had me so interested in learning more about the crows. Things kind of slowed down after that but not necessarily in a bad way it just took the time to develop the story and characters.

I thought it was unique that we were shown some of the main character's depression struggles because it felt more realistic for the situation that she just went through. It was refreshing to see a character that wasn't instantly perfect and fierce.

The first half of this book was a lot of building the characters and trying to figure out who to trust. I found myself glued in and anxious for what was to come next!! It definitely picks up the pace though the last half and the ending was awesome. I'm hoping the second book goes more fast paced like the ending did.

The romance in this wasn't a huge part but it was still sweet. There was an unexpected love triangle, I was all for. However, the ship I was rooting for wasn't really there but I still really loved how sweet the other guy was! But I'm holding out hope for my team!

Sometimes books with the gorgeous covers makes me nervous cause I worry they won't live up to the story. This one definitely had a great foundation for the potential to be an awesome series. I can't wait to see how things play out!! Crossing my fingers we get more depth from one specific, handsome character too!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an eARC of this novel in 2019 in exchange for an honest review. My deepest apologies for my review being so egregiously late.

This cover is absolutely stunning, and paired with the synopsis of the story I was drawn in like a moth to a flame. Speaking of flames, they play a major part in this story with regards to the trauma our main character, Thia, experiences within the first few chapters. Very mild (in my opinion…read at your own risk) trigger warnings for death of a parent or parental figure, disfigurement and scarring via fire, and prolonged periods of depression.

For a young adult fantasy novel this story was tackling some major themes, and generally doing them justice. I loved the depiction of depression in the novel by showcasing our character’s struggle to get out of bed, and participate in life around her. We got to see how other characters tried to intervene and help in their own ways, which I thought was so realistic to my own mental health experiences.

Depression, grief, and working through trauma are strong themes, as well as catalysts, that propel the plot forward. I thought the author did a great job of subtly, or intentionally, displaying how each character we met had their own internal battles that sometimes resulted in very physical, and obvious, scars.

I enjoyed the snarky, and oftentimes downright cruel, banter between Princess Thia and her soon to be husband, Prince Ericen. I kept waiting for the moment Thia gave in to his sly advances, but she never forgot who he was, or what he represented. Ericen was a really interesting character, and I kept waiting for his story arc to take an unexpected turn, but he just wasn’t ready to divert from his lot in life. I’m truly hoping that in the second novel he was able to break away from his mother’s dark shadow, and come into the light he so clearly desires not only for himself, but for his kingdom.

As more of the plot is revealed we the reader, as well as our characters, begin to understand why our evil character acts out in numerous ways. However, this knowledge doesn’t make her wrong doings (aka violent mass murder, physical and psychological warfare and torture) suddently redeemable or okay. It was another reminder that every character carries a history that influences their present, and how they choose to act under the weight of their individual burdens.

Thia is given a love interest aside from Prince Ericen, and while he was incredibly sweet, smart, and a bit dorky I had a hard time connecting with him as quickly as she did. The relationship between Thia and Ericen, or Thia and Caylus, didn’t have enough on the page build up or tension to warrant their chemistry and dynamics.

While the beginning of the novel felt well paced, the latter half of the novel felt a bit clipped and rushed. We were told time was passing through repetitive days and actions, and I think this led to a disconnect for me as the reader when trying to align myself with the romantic feelings the characters shared with one another.

The time period in our characters’ lives when we the reader are brought into the story makes navigating the magic system involving the crows a bit tricky. As soon as we meet the crows they are taken away (that’s putting it mildly). The author does provide a full index of terms and explanations at the end of the book, but I wish we were given more time, or even flashbacks, to experience the crows at the height of their powers.

The author tries to combat their absence by using Caylus’ character and scientific experiments as a way for Thia to teach him (and by extension us) more about their unique abilities and strengths. The crows and their magic are really the only true fantasy element in this story, and they are present for only about 35 percent of the novel.

This story is a duology and I’d be really interested to see where Thia and her hatchling crow go from here. Will the characters who genuinely want a better world for themselves and their people be able to overcome the sins of their parents? Will the crows rise back to power or die out in a final battle? I guess I’ll have to read the next novel to find out.

Hey fellow book lovers! 📚 I just finished reading "The Storm Crow" by Kalyn Josephson, and I'm giving it a solid 3 out of 5 stars. It was a decent read, but it had some aspects that left me feeling a little underwhelmed.

Let's start with the positives – the world-building was pretty cool. 🌦️ The author crafted a unique fantasy realm with floating islands and magical giant crows. The idea of the crows' connection with the characters was intriguing and added a nice touch of magic to the story. 🐦💫

The main character, Thia, was a strong protagonist, and I appreciated her growth throughout the book. She faced some tough challenges and showed resilience, which made her relatable. The supporting characters had their moments too, though I wish they had been given a bit more depth.

Now, about the plot... It had a promising start with the theft of the crows' eggs, which set the stage for an epic journey. 🌪️ However, as the story progressed, I couldn't shake the feeling that it followed a pretty predictable path. I was hoping for more surprises or twists to keep me on my toes, but it played out in a somewhat formulaic manner.

The pacing was generally okay, but there were a few moments where I found myself losing interest. I wanted more excitement and action, but it didn't always deliver.

The writing style was easy to get into, and the author's descriptions helped create a vivid picture of the world. However, there were times when the narrative felt a bit too straightforward, and I craved more complexity.

Overall, "The Storm Crow" is a decent fantasy read, but it didn't quite reach the level of greatness I was hoping for. It has some fantastic elements, but it also falls into some well-trodden fantasy tropes. If you're a fan of magical worlds and crows, you might enjoy it, but keep your expectations in check. 🌟 Happy reading!

This one is a slow burn but worth every second. The writing is beautiful and poetic. It's a story you just enjoy visiting and existing in its space for a little while. I really appreciated the focus on mental health.

This is a gorgeous young adult piece that is packed with magic and intrigue, as well as a little supernatural flair. I loved the main character in this book and how strong and independent she is and how we get to see her change and become something much stronger than what she was. I love the cover art in the title of this book gives it a very mystical feel and the art itself is gorgeous.

This book wasn't my favorite, but I think this is a book I would have enjoyed if I'd read it as a younger reader. Overall, I wasn't disappointed by this book, but I wasn't wowed either. It was a quick read though.

I tried reading this at a time when I was losing interest in YA but still wanted to give it a shot. Like with so many other YA books I tried recently this clearly wasn't for me and while I would read some of it I never wanted to carry on and abandon it for months. I'm sure this is good but it's simply not a genre I enjoy anymore.

I have elected not to read and review this book due to time constraints. Thank you for the opportunity.

The prologue opens with inspiration and excitement for things to come and then ends with horror and devastation. Anthia’s world falls apart when her homeland, Rhodaire, is attacked by Illucians. Her mother is killed and so are the large, beautiful, magical crows that shared their world. Her land is decimated because without the crows’ help, nothing flourishes or grows. Her sister, Caliza, is now queen and has betrothed Anthia to the Illucian Prince Ericen. Of course, neither sister is happy about the deal but they don’t see any other way to try to mend their broken land. Before Anthia leaves her home, she visits the towers where the crows once lived. She finds and hides an egg then takes it to Illucia with her. She has no idea how to get it to hatch but she’s not leaving it behind. She’s searched everywhere for information on the crows and she’s hoping she’s going to figure it out soon. Ericen is difficult to read and Anthia is unsure about trusting him. He seems very loyal to his mother, Razel, the Illucian Queen. Razel is terrible and loves cruelty. She wants to conquer all of the other countries also and doesn’t care about who she harms in the process. Anthia accidentally meets rebels and inadvertently makes new friends in Illucia. She manages to enjoy some of her time there until she discovers a secret of Razel’s. The action and intrigue continues in the sequel, Crow Rider. I enjoyed several characters, their flaws and quirks: Anthia, Kiva, Ericen, Caylus, and the adventure that never seems to end, 5 stars!

The most disappointing part of The Storm Crow was that it wasn’t a battle book. I expected war, and fire, and vengeance, but this ended up being more of a princess-stuck-in-tower sort of story that left me unsatisfied.

We’ll start at the beginning. There’s a surprise battle and Thia and her family basically lose everything. Supposedly they were this strong nation that fell apart in one night and that was that. It fell flat for me, mainly because I wasn’t given a reason to care. Just thinking of Eragon and Crown of Feathers, the scene is set first before the losses and it led to me wanting to learn more, to want to avenge the characters. This book just left me with a sense of meh-ness that never left me.

That being said, I appreciate that they touch on her depression after her losses – so often we’re given super pragmatic heroines who pull up their bootstraps and carry on after a loss, but Thia gives herself time to wallow in it (instead, her sister pulls up her bootstraps). However, after the initial bout of sadness, she moves on, gets angry, and her sadness no longer effects her.

I will admit that there were a lot of cute moments throughout the book, but no stand out characters. They didn’t make an impact on me and much of their actions and motivations were geared towards the sequel – it was as if nothing was supposed to happen in this book. All the action and drama was left to book two.

As a whole, was not impressed with this one, and I don’t think I’ll be continuing with this series.

Plot: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
World Building: 2/5
Writing: 4/5
Pacing: 2/5
Overall: 2.5/5
GoodReads Rating: 3.8/5

eARC gifted via NetGalley by Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review.

Such a great sequel! I need the next book immediately!! If you haven’t picked the first book up I recommend you do it today!

Crows are how one kingdom functions and prospers. But when another empire destroys all the crows in one fell swoop and takes over, two princesses are left to pick up the pieces and try to save their kingdom. Until the youngest finds a last crow egg that somehow survived the slaughter. Honestly, I did not finish this book. I loved the idea and it had a lot of promise but I couldn’t get past my hatred of the main character. I found her irritating and unlikeable

The YA fantasy genre is quite populated these days, but to find a book that is not only packed with excellent adventure and world-building, but also accurate and relatable depictions of mental illness, is a rare and exciting thing. This book proves that those two things are not mutually exclusive; you can have a badass heroine who also struggles with depression. This book did a great job of keeping me interested and making me love and feel for its main character.

The Storm Crow felt like an amalgamation of so many YA fantasy novels. Girl is betrothed to the prince of an enemy nation, hidden band of rebels scheming to overthrow the nation, the leader is over-the-top evil and has no other personality trait. It all goes how you’d expect. It was a slow read because most of the time it is just Anthia going about her daily life and interacting with characters who don’t have enough depth to make it interesting. There’s surprisingly little action and the plot involving the crow's egg is completely predictable.

There are two things that did stand out. One was the romantic arc which didn’t take the predictable route. I mean I’m kind of glad that the author did something a bit different, but I have to be honest that this romance wasn’t very exciting. Forced betrothal romances can be fun if written well, and those characters had more spark than the romance we got. Maybe it’s hypocritical to want a cliché after criticizing so many of them but subverting clichés is only fun if you make it interesting.

The other thing that stands out from this novel is that it tries to tackle mental health. Not many YA fantasy novels attempt this subject so I appreciate the effort. I also can’t speak to everyone’s experience and I’ve seen some reviews about how they found it comforting or relatable. But for me at least I didn’t think it was very well done. It was often brought up in passing or in retrospect, and we never really got to delve into how she was truly feeling. Of course it wouldn’t be an fun book if she was constantly in a deep depression, but it just felt too glossed over. Again I think the author had good intentions, but it didn’t work for me.

Rating: 5 / 5 ★

This book was absolutely brilliant. An epic, raw fantasy novel with magical crows and rebellions.

The Storm Crow tells the story of a tropical kingdom called Rhodaire, where magical elemental crows are a part of society and everyday life. Until one day an invading empire attacks and destroys everything.
Princess Anthia spirals into depression after the attack on her kingdom which killed all the crows and her mother, the Queen. But right when everything looks bleakest and Thia is about to be sent off to marry the crown Prince of the rival kingdom, she finds a hidden crow egg that survived the attack. With her sister Caliza, she devises a plan to take back what was stolen from them.

There is so much epicness in this book to love and I don’t know where to start!
Okay okay; the crows. I loved the crows. I thought this was a really unique magic system, there are battle crows, storm crows, earth crows, fire crows, shadow crows etc. Magical crows for pretty much everything. The opening prologue gives you this sense of awe and transports you to this very real and vivid magical land filled with these wondrous birds.

And then it is all brutally taken away. This was before the first chapter and I was already attached. I felt the pain this kingdom and Thia felt at this magic, these beautiful and incredible creatures being destroyed.

But what came next… I think this is one of the reasons I connected with this book so much. The author has done a brilliant job of portraying depression. And honestly I feel like this should happen more often in fantasy novels. I mean her kingdom is decimated, her mother killed, her way of life forever changed, it makes complete sense that she would struggle to get out of bed and face the day.

“I knew what I needed to do, but working up the will to do it felt like trying to fight my way above water in a depthless ocean.
It was so hard not to drown.”

As someone who has dealt with and still does battle depression I connected with this book and our protagonist. I felt the raw emotion and bleakness that she felt and connected with so much of this brilliant writing.

“The crows were gone.
Every day, I said those words to myself, but they didn’t feel real. Each breath felt like a lie, as if I’d climbed out of a cocoon into another realm, one of ash and shadowed memories that tore at me like talons.”

But Thia, oh gosh Thia. She is strong. She is so damn strong. She battles depression and everything the world has thrown at her but she grows as a character; it’s not instant but she gets through it. And she fights back.

“A spark of fury rallied against the prison of grief and pain that had grown inside me layer by layer over the last few months.”

I also loved all the other characters in this story. There is Caliza who is Thia’s sister and is thrown into the position of Queen after their mother dies.
I loved that Caliza although not the main character, and despite not having a very large role, felt real and strong too. She didn’t always understand what Thia was going through in regards to her depression but she tried and she was doing her best. She was thrown in the deep end after their mother died and has had to be strong for their kingdom. But she loves Thia and she does all she can to help her and their kingdom, sometimes making the tough choices that no one else wants to.

I also loved Kiva who is Thia’s best friend and a guard. I loved the friendship between Thia and Kiva and the way they had each other’s backs. It felt real and I loved the depth they would go to to protect each other and look after each other; this friendship was definitely one of my favourite things in the book.

“I felt like a kite someone had cut loose, left to the mercy of the slightest breeze that could tear me apart.”

But one of the other things I really liked is the villain. I feel like I might not have noticed this if it hadn’t been on my mind recently but I had been thinking a lot about how there is a new wave of strong female protagonists in fantasy novels (perhaps this isn’t new but noticing it and commenting on it has been) but then I started to think; what about the villains? All the books I had read recently had male villains that the women had to fight/beat and I was thinking; I want a strong female villain. And then bam I read this book and along came Razel.
Razel is the Queen of Illucia, the Kingdom that has slowly been conquering all the others.
She is evil and beautiful, brutal and unapologetic and even though you kind of hate her I loved her because of how horrible she was. She is powerful and I think it was great seeing the powerful villain be a woman.

“Don’t let Razel win. Don’t let her silence the storm inside you.”

Also one of the epic things that this book has is at the back there is a breakdown of all the different types of elemental crows and a breakdown of the kingdoms in the book. I love when books do this, and it was extremely informative. The world building in this novel felt incredibly well done and it was easy to picture this thrilling fantasy world.

Anyways I think I have rambled on enough about all the reasons why I loved this book. I highly HIGHLY recommend you go out and read it asap because it was brilliant and amazing and I can not wait for the next one!

This is a book I didn't know if I'd likebut I ended up enjoying it quite a bit even though I had a few things I didn't like.
I actually don't have much to say about it, I'd definitely read the sequel.

Iyla is the storm crow Anthia is riding. I like the name iyla. She is to have a crow of her own. Iyla belongs to her mother's best friend. I couldn't get interested.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for provinding this ARC. Unfortunately I couldn't finish this book (~15%). The worldbuilding seemed very rudimentary to me and I couldn't get invested into following the main character. This book didn't work for me, but I hope the author continues to improve in future installments of the series and beyond.

Disclaimer: This review MAY contain spoilers. I received an Advance Reader Copy at no cost from the publisher/author. All opinions in my review are my own.

This book was positively smashing! I can only imagine that the rest of this series is going to be killer.

The world-building in this book is magical. Absolutely atmospheric. It is written so well that the reader can step right into Thia's shoes and feel everything that she is feeling. It starts in the first pages and it doesn't let up. I love fantasy stories that have richly imagined worlds because it draws me into the story and makes me live the story. This book definitely falls into that category. There were a few things other than the physical world that I felt needed a little more depth, such as the magic system. I am hoping that these things get more explanations in the next book.

The premise for this story is so riveting! From the moment I read the synopsis for this book, I knew that it was one that I was going to read without a doubt. I love unique stories with original worlds and The Storm Crow is a book that really does stand apart in that respect. So many kudos to the author for the creativity laced in this book. While the baseline tropes that are used are nothing new, it is the combination of ideas and themes that are woven into them that made this so special.

As with the tropes in this story, the plot is one that has been done before, though I did like all of the elements that the author used to make her own. Some parts of the story were a little predictable but otherwise satisfying. The pacing seemed a little off to me, but it was something that didn't bother me terribly.

This story really spoke to me because of the mental health representation. Depression, anxiety, and PTSD are all things that I personally struggle with so it was amazing to see such a wonderful portrayal of these in a fantasy book. If these things themes are included in a book then it is usually a contemporary book. I loved seeing them pop up in my favorite genre. I also loved the diversity in this book.

Let's talk characters. Anthia is one of those characters that latches onto you and won't let you go. Her struggles were so easy for me to identify with and I was cheering her on through the whole story. Ericen is a character that I was unsure of at first but he really grew on me. The other side characters were likable and written into the story well. I loved the overall theme of characters with things that haunt them. Everyone is grappling with their own shadows in this and it really spoke to me. Some characters could have used some more depth but they were enjoyable overall. I also have to mention that I adored Thia's friendship with Kiva. Wonderful representation of friendship is something that I am always on board for.

The romance in this book doesn't overpower the story. It is a sweet, slow-burn romance that is very heartwarming. I am genuinely excited to see where the romance will lead in the next book. *wink*

The writing style is just gorgeous. I totally fell in love with it. It is crafted so that the reader can effortlessly devour the words. Not only is it easy to read, but there are plenty of details contained in the text, though not so much to bog the reader down.

Overall, I'd like to applaud Kalyn Josephson for such a breathtaking and beautiful story! This is a very creative and magical tale that I wholeheartedly recommend. I enjoyed reading this so much and I can't wait to see what will happen in the next installment of this series!

The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson was really great! I loved that it talked about depression and anxiety, we rarely hear about mental illnesses in YA fantasy but I thought it was well written. The storyline about magic crows, family and politics was enticing. Very little romance (just enough) and mostly focused on friends and family. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Thank you NetGalley for a free ebook copy.