Starts with cousin-incest and the political "intrigue" is which young adults are horny for which other young adults. Plus, the one nonbinary is also not human. Pass.

I tried many times to finish this book because I know many will love it. Sadly though the politics of it were a bit much for me and I had a hard time connecting with the characters.

Huge thank you to Lerner Publishing Group and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to review this book!

When I first read the description of this book I was intrigued, it sounded right up my alley! But as soon as I started reading it, it became VERY clear this one wasn’t for me. I should have just stopped after the first two pages but I spent far too much time trying to force myself to finish it instead; trying to care even the slightest bit about any of the characters or how the story ended until I ended up giving up at 23%. My actual rating for this book is 1.5 stars, but seeing as NetGalley doesn’t allow half stars, I rounded up.

I saw another reviewer describe this book as “Game of Thrones meets Cruel Intentions meets Fantasia” and that’s exactly what it is. Now, you might be thinking “Surely those things don’t work together?” and you’d be absolutely right. Those three things should never be put together because then you end up with a book that’s essentially full of incest, substance abuse, and magically animated objects. Actually, considering some of the subjects this book touches on, I’m REALLY surprised it’s marketed as YA Fiction.

Full (spoiler-y) review here: https://wmsreads.tumblr.com/post/186214494217/

DNF @ 15% - The premise of this was so interesting and I love fantasy books with elves but I just could not get into this. I couldn't connect with any of the characters and I didn't enjoy the writing style. For me the writing is so important and if i'm not engrossed in the book after the first few chapters then I tend to give up : (

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy,

This was sadly a DNF for me. I could not connect with the writing style.

Unfortunately I couldn't get into this: the story took directions that I did not enjoy reading about. That being said, there was a lot to like about it - the writing style complemented both the pacing and multiple perspectives and seeing different sides to the events unfolding was one of the highlights of the book for me. While I didn't enjoy it, there's definitely a lot of potential there for other readers who would be more interested in the direction the events and dynamics built up in the plot took.

This book did not work for me for one simple reason: none of the characters were likable. There wasn't someone to truly love and root for. They were fickle or selfish and inconsistent. There was too much assigning of labels to each person to hit all the diversity check marks a young adult novel needs these days. It got in the way of the story until I had to DNF it halfway through. At some level, a story must be enjoyable enough to keep the reader going.

DId not finish as it was not for me. I am sure those who enjoy fantasy would enjoy this. I did not like the main character.

So this story is told from four different POV's; Thelia, Parsifal, Bayled and Sapphire. As you can probably tell from the low-ish rating I've given the book, I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I liked the ideas and some of the characters, but some parts just seemed a little far fetched (which considering it's a fantasy book, says a lot).

I liked Sapphire's struggle between their people and knowing the humans are right, then fighting for the humans (after falling in love with two of them). Bayled was my favourite character, at first he was so naive and followed Corene and the king's ever word, but after time he begun seeing them in a different light and eventually told Corene where to go which I was so relieved about.

One thing I will say is the sex scene with Thelia was brilliantly written, and I'm talking about the foreplay. It's not often in books that the guy takes the time with the girl before they have sex, so it was welcoming to read for a change. However, having said this I'm so sick of incest in books, granted Thelia and Parsifal are cousins not siblings, but it's still tiring having to read incestuous relationships in books (if I had known I probably wouldn't have read the book to be quite honest).

I saw Castle of Lies described as a CW-esque backstabbing machinations fest with a poly relationship, which is about as strong a pitch for a book as I can imagine. It’s about a girl named Thelia who is ace-spectrum and an ice-cold bitch; her cousin Parsifal, who is a promiscuous bisexual and whom Thelia eventually bangs; and a soldier in the invading elf army, Sapphire, who is nonbinary and also not-human.

If that summary sounds a little salty, it’s because I regretted the lost potential in this book. I actually really loved Thelia and wanted good things to happen for her, but it was frustrating to see an ace-spectrum character whose main trait as perceived by others is icy. (Again, I love icy bitch women characters! It’s just.) And like, Sapphire, I in fact think we should have way more non-human characters who don’t adhere to human gender binaries, but at the same time — there’s no other non-binary characters in the book! For the only one to be literally not human, it just felt pointed.

All of this meant that I had a hard time connecting with the book. I do truly love poly relationships and would be delighted to see more of them in litrature, but so far the one in Rachel Hartman’s books is the only one I have truly loved. Castle of Lies and That Inevitable Victorian Thing really let me down ideologically.

Note: I received an e-galley of Castle of Lies for review from the publisher.

I do love any fantasy/adventure novel, so I knew that this one would be right up my alley!! Castle Of Lies was an interesting read that kept me constantly on my toes and uncertain what would happen next.

Castle of Lies follows Thelia, Parsival, and Corene when the kingdom gets invaded by elves. When they are trapped in the castle that when they meet an elf warrior, Sapphire. I enjoyed the magic in the story. It felt alive, charming & funny. Like the food cart! This story, itself, I do feel that this is a YA that is for older readers. This is a strong character lead book and while I did like the world, magic, I didn't have a favorite character.
However, I did really enjoy the author's writing style, and for that, I will be looking forward to reading more by her.

I would like to thank the publishers for letting me review this book, however this novel just was not for me.

I only made it about 30% into this book before I just couldn’t do it anymore. I realize that it’s an e-arc, but even for an e-arc this novel is horribly edited. There are many choppy sentences, grammatical errors, and formatting errors. Not to mention editing mistakes, but the revision is lacking as well too. The characters voices do not leap off the page in any way, and I found myself having a hard time differentiating between the chapters despite their being different POVs. Everyone’s voices felt very much the same, rather than different.

The way this novel throws you right into the plot was very confusing. This can be done well with books, but I felt like I was put into the middle of a story where I was expected to already know who all the characters were and their relations to each other and all about the world and kingdoms they live in. Thus, I was very confused, and unable to connect to the characters or the story or really follow along with anything that was happening.

I do also identify on the asexual spectrum, and I know one of the main characters is supposed to be, but I just don’t like the way the author (incidentally or not) villanised the asexual character, making her cold, heartless, etc. Because that’s often how the world sees us asexuals. Cold, heartless, lacking emotion, which is a very harmful stereotype.

I think this novel has the potential to be good with much editing, revision, and taking into consideration sensitivity or beta readers who identify with the sexualities presented. I will not be continuing to read or finish this series.

Thank you.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

3 Stars

You know, I read a lot of books from different genres in my life and once in a while I get bored from them. They repeat the same plot, the identical characters and over use tropes and it's nothing unique that I have never seen before. But then comes a book that decides to go a different route and take risks and trying to nudge me into its tale, to be invested and to care. Castle of Lies tries that but like every ambition it doesn't necessarily succeeds.

Kiersi Burkhart tries to make Castle of Lies interesting by presenting us with a unique concept of magic being so volatile it springs to life objects from a bucket to a broom and so on and now the characters lives are flipped upside down all the while dealing with elves invading the kingdom. Straight away it begins and ends exactly as you imagine, but because of how it differentiate from other books of the fantasy genre I had to continue reading because I was curious what will happen next and so I got blinded into completing it.

The characters are give or take will either infuriates you or you'd end up liking them. They are to me more like a bland mash of carbon clay not that interesting except for Sapphire and Bayled who only kept my attention on the story cause I was worried and cared about them. The world building isn't perfect but captivated my attention but I wish the author worked on it more in order to polish on it. Her writing is simple, easy to read and nothing grandeur to give any remarks about.

Overall it's a nice book, try it or don't It is simply my frank opinion on the matter.

*** I received a copy via NetGalley for review. All opinions are my own.***

Synopsis: Thelia isn't in line to inherit the crown, but she's been raised to take power however she can. She's been friends with Princess Corene her whole life, and she's scheming to marry Bayled, the heir to the throne. But her plans must change when an army of elves invades the kingdom. Thelia, her cousin Parsival, and Corene become trapped in the castle. An elf warrior, Sapphire, may be Thelia's only hope of escape, but Sapphire has plans of their own. Meanwhile, an ancient magic is awakening within the castle, with the power to destroy the whole kingdom. Can Thelia find a way to protect her future--and her life?

Very interesting opportunities for good rep in this story. However, it bordered more on offensive and I was very uncomfortable with how some characters were portrayed. Not a pleasurable read. I can't say I recommend it.

However, I do see great promise in the author for all the plot threads were set up.

I admit I was pretty intrigued to read this book because the premise sounded something quite different from what I’ve been reading lately in fantasy, and I’ve heard it was queer so I had high hopes and went with pretty high expectations, and I have to say my experience reading this novel was one of the weirdest ones I’ve had in a long time, and overall I was pretty disappointed with how everything was handled.

It started off pretty confusing and it took me a while to understand what was going on. Though I think the concept of the story had potential, I didn’t like the outcome, and I feel it needs a lot more editing. I felt quite overwhelmed the first few chapters, because there was a lot of info dump thrown at us, but as I kept reading the book I was expecting to see more things and I found everything super lineal.

There was barely any information about the world building and magic system. For the story to be so politically driven and focused on this castle, we barely got any information regarding the society or the world, which was pretty disappointing.

I also have to say that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the character arcs. Though I thought that part of the story was going to be my favorite, because Castle of Lies was supposed to have a queer cast of characters, everything was so lackluster. Pasrifal was a very stereotypical bisexual, and I don’t think Thelia’s aro/ace representation was well handled. The characters overall seemed pretty underdeveloped, and one dimensional, and the interactions between them were just so weird and awkwardly written that it was hard to believe what was happening. There was also the fact that there was some incest going on throughout the story that had some explicit sex scenes and were pretty uncomfortable to read (I don’t usually mind sex in books, but the fact that these two characters were cousins was not so good), and that romance (along with another one that happened at some point in the novel) came completely out of nowhere and barely had any transgression.

Another thing that really bugged me was the constant change of POVs. There were only four perspectives in the story, but it was constantly jumping from one to another. I think we only got two pages into one POV and then suddenly we dive into another, and that frustrated me so much because we barely got to delve into their dynamics and inner monologues.

Overall, though this had such an incredible premise and it was supposed to be queer, I was so let down by everything, and there was nothing that could redeem the story for me. The plot was stuck a lot of times, nothing was happening and I got so bored till the point I considered DNFing it, and the characters were so underwhelming, so unfortunately this was a flop for me.

*2.5 Stars*
Castle of Lies is a YA Fantasy which presents four different points of view: Thelia, Parsifal (Percy), Bayled, and Sapphire.
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What I like:
I admit– I like the book cover. The overall concept of the plot is intriguing and interesting. I like reading about elves and such. The setting is okay. I don’t have a problem with that because I can imagine the places inside and outside the castle.
Further, the writing style is cringe-worthy but it’s easy to read. I really expected some flaws because my copy is an e-ARC. So maybe with a lot of effort in editing, this book might work. I will probably read some of Burkhart’s novel in the future.
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What I did not like:
Firstly, the characters. I did not see any character development in this novel except for Bayled. Thelia– the main character (I suppose), has a character development throughout the book but it seems like that development is ‘forced’. I did not feel a connection with any of the characters, so I don’t have a favorite character in this book. How I wish there is a point of view from Corene. I might understand her behavior if there is a brief introduction or something that is related to her because all I can feel about her is annoyance. I also don’t think the term ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ is appropriate for this plot.
Lastly, I think there’s a lot that is missing in this book as it is somewhat lacking in depth. I don’t know why there’s a mention of a secret tunnel for service crew when none of them seems to know there’s one. I would believe it if at least one of the crew (like the chef) went there to hide.
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Overall:
This book has potential because of its unusual concept but the characters and some parts of the plot are not well-developed. I thought it was good and very interesting but it did not really reach my expectations. I must have expected more because this is the first book I’ve read which includes a wide range of LGBTQ+. Nevertheless, I enjoyed a few parts of the story and this book could’ve been great.
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Recommend or not?
If you want to try, go ahead and read. But I want to remind you, this book is not for me.
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Content warning: mentions of rape and murder; incest; violence/gore; and excessive drinking

A disappointed and disjointed fantasy. While the political intrigue had some potential, the characters were flat and uninteresting and the writing felt choppy and disjointed. I also struggled to make sense of the magic system throughout the book, it was never really explained or even well established and at times descended to the farcical- a giant mouth in the wall that swallows rubbish for example. None of the characters were likable, and I could not relate to any of them either. I was intrigued by the inclusion of a non binary character, but struggled to buy into their relationship with Thelia, especially given the paralyzing fear of elves she displays in the beginning of the book. This evaporates at some point but there is no real explanation for that either. Overall some good ideas but not enough to save the book.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Thelia wants to be queen and has worked for years towards that end, cultivating friendships with the king's daughter and his ward. All her plans come crashing down, though, when the palace is attacked and occupied by Elves. Imprisoned with a small group of courtiers, Thelia must make alliances and find her way back home.

I'm usually first in line for a good court intrigue story, but this one just didn't seem to catch. Backgrounds are confusing, everyone is betraying everyone else and switching sides and making heartfelt declarations. I was honestly very rarely sure if anyone was on a side other than their own. And while I have no problem with authors making up new words, I do like them to be presented in a context that means you can understand what they mean; I was quite a way in before I figured out what 'flerg' meant, because the first several times anyone used it it could have meant a few different things.

Ultimately this just wasn't for me, but I hope it does well and I'm grateful to netgalley and Lerner pub group.

I don't know what it is but lately I am not having much luck in the book department. I just thought the characters were average and the plot was just not very interesting to me.
I am sure there are readers that will really love and appreciate this book. Unfortunately I am not the reader for this book.