DNF @ 30%

Many thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Before I say anything about this book, can we just stop and appreciate this author for a minute? I found out the author wrote this at 15, and at 19, she had Shadow Frost, her debut novel, published … and can we just take a moment to appreciate how freaking awesome that is? Writing is hard. Publishing is even harder. Following your dreams is … pffft. *grumbles about being an adult and needing a drink* So to be able to accomplish all this is a huge feat and definitely one to be applauded. I mean, that being said … this reads like a book written by a 15-year-old, unfortunately. But there are definite gems in the writing that mean I’ll be watching out for more of Coco Ma’s work, because I think she has all the potential to write a great book … this just isn’t it. Not yet.

The prologue of this book was freaking great. Talk about starting on a high point. If the rest of the story had been written like the prologue, this would easily have been a five-star book. It was mysterious and dark, hinting at greater things to come, but really just set up a tone so well. A tone which, unfortunately, the rest of the book didn’t quite live up to, but when I first picked it up and read the prologue, I was so ready to dive into the book after that.

There are a LOT of cliche YA tropes. If that’s your thing, you might enjoy this. For me, though, it was a little too predictable and like a typical YA fantasy quest book. There was nothing particularly new or stand-out-ish about this. The tropes weren't used in new and unique ways. It felt very run-of-the-mill and pretty much everything that would pop into your head with a stereotypical YA quest story.

The first 15%-ish of the book is really sort of slow and not much happens, and then a quest sort of smacks the reader in the face suddenly out of nowhere, with absolutely no build-up. It was really nothing, nothing, here go on this dangerous quest that might claim your lives but I'm sure you'll be fine. Most of the beginning of the story is actually spent in Asterin's room, with lots of exposition and backstory.

I loved the banter, and it never ceased to make me chuckle. Now, is it unrealistic, given the characters and the setting? I’d say so, yes. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I simply enjoyed it. It was fun and a bit of lightheartedness in an otherwise darker story.

None of these characters seem to act appropriately to their station, and where this comes up the most, in my opinion, is in regards to how they treat the princess. Quinlan calls the princess “brat” and it’s so inappropriate and off-putting that I sort of cringed every time. They show up in her bedroom when she’s half-dressed. They speak to her as friends, tease her, call her names, etc. It sort of ruins the setting for me, because they seem more like modern-day teenagers than people in a Feudal-esque setting where there’s clear demarcation between classes.

Asterin has really terrible ideas, but attempts to pass them off as brilliant. And they just … aren’t. Like there’s this horrible monster killing people, and I need to assemble a small army to face it. Who should I take? Oh, I know, my best friend who can’t fight or do magic! This will be great!

The romance is so … awkward. There’s two guys vying for Asterin’s attention, because of course there is, and Asterin has noticed them both. With one, though, they are clearly flirting. A princess and her guard. Openly flirting. Like this is a normal thing. In such painfully obvious, very teenager ways that made me sort of cringe. I mean, we’ve all done this, I feel like, because we’ve unfortunately all been teenagers (and survived, thankfully … unless you’re a ghost, in which case … sorry, man. Teen years can be hard).

There’s a lot of points of view (and thus, point of view shifting), and I’m not sure the story really needed to be told by this many perspectives. A couple maybe, sure, but the voices weren’t distinct at all, and it was a bit confusing and disorienting when it switched point of view and it wasn’t obvious it had … and that happened pretty often.

This book had some really fun parts and I think the world building was well done. It's such an interesting world! But, overall, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

First there was the characters. For the first part of the book, most of the characters annoyed me. I could see glimmers of things I liked, so I kept reading, but it was hard to stay invested when I didn't like the characters all that much. They all seemed a bit whiny. As the book progressed, I started liking them more and more though. For the most part, they all grew on me. I did appreciate the plethora of snark and sass they all dished out.

I think the pacing was a bit off with this too. At first, things seemed to move painfully slow and then it felt like the plot was speeding up, only to have it slow down once more. Then at the end, I think things were a little too rushed. I enjoyed the story for the most part, but I wish the pacing would have been a little more consistent.

This is such a rich and dynamic world. I really enjoyed learning about it and seeing the characters interact with the world. While I had some frustrations, I did ultimately have a good time reading this book.

My Rating : 3.75
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Thankyou so much Netgalley for providing the e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and not influenced in any way.
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This book follows our main squad of characters : Our oblivious yet sassy princess Asterin, her bro/bodyguard Orion who is a total buttercup sweetness, her bestie/lady in waiting Luna who is fiercely loyal and strong, (Not to forget the two new warrior royals who wants to protect her at all cost) her royal warrior queen Rose who has the best dialogues and is really witty, her magic guru/CRUSH Quinlin who is a package and a perfect BF material for her reallyy , and FINALLYY my darling bae Harry who is actually a demon but such a goofball, loyal to the squad and is my favorite character in this whole book really.
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First of all, let's talk about the different characters introduced and followed. I wouldn't call them the best squad, but they were an amazing group of friends with varying character traits. Harry is my absolute favorite and I will fight y'all if you say so otherwise. The character development he gets through the course of this book is amazing and it's so heart breaking to read about his background and his story. The other characters were complimenting to one another and really made this book better. The magic system is element based, and they kind of have a catalyst in the form of stones to harness their power. I am a really big fan of elemental magic and it was quite nice to read about the system.
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Second of all, the plot line of this book was a little cliched and it's nothing we haven't seen in any YA fantasy book and of course predictable. But what made this really different was the multiple perspective of all the characters involved in any important scene and how it affected everybody. The pacing was quite slow at the start of this book, but it kept me going because I was already in love with the side characters more than the main characters and wanted to find more about them.
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With that being said, The dialogues were a little choppy and incoherent at times and felt awkward to actually play the scene out in your head, but as long as you aren't keen on sentence formation, you could enjoy the story. At times you get confused slightly to why certain scenes are happening and figure out the reason later. I was slightly annoyed with that, but it didn't hinder the plot. I would have liked there to be more character development for the whole squad and would have loved to know more about the kingdom and the magic system in general. We get the present happenings of them all, but a bit of history would have helped this book a lot more.
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Overall, I absolutely loved the side characters more than the main ones ( Especially Orion and Harry.. what can I say? I would marry Harry in a heartbeat. Who wouldn't? And they are the most adorably handsome fierce strong characters that kept me focused on reading this book). The plotline is not very unique but it gave an interesting twist in the perspective and the ending was absolutely devastating to read. I really wish things gets resolved in the second book because my little heart is slightly breaking because certain things happened and I don't want them to stay that way. It's a solid fantasy read if you overlook the overused plotline, cliched story, slightly awkward dialogues at times and predictable plot twists. I would definitely recommend this book IF you don't mind the above list.

I just can't believe, that I haven't read this earlier!
It felt so much like a Sarah J. Maas Book - and yes thats a great thing! I loved every minute in this world and devoured the book in one day, because the puns were perfect and the magical world even more so.
Just the idea of having several different magical abilities in the elemental area, and that you are more gifted, if you can manage more elements made me fall in love with the book immediately.
The storyline was super exciting and I just couldn't stop reading, because I needed to know If I am right with my ideas, but Coco Ma is a master of twists and turns and also writes the most relatable villains, so some ideas were soo wrong and thats where the author wanted to lead us!

Let us come to the humor. I LOVED Quinley and Asterin and can't wait for more of this super sarcastic and strong duo. I just live for their kind of communication and have laughed out loud quiet often while reading! We also have some LGBTQ characters and a great monster. We have super cool magical powers and cute relationships, that I adored. Everyone was just perfect for me and made me forget reality for some time. In the end I ended up liking nearly every single character and now don't want to wait for book two. This author just became an auto buy author for me.

There is so much that I wanted to love about Shadow Frost. A young author! A powerful princess hunting a demon! An amazing cover!

And yet…

I had to DNF this one. I stopped about 10% of the way in.

I just wasn’t connecting to the characters or the story. There was nothing that really hooked me from the get go, and I was honestly a little bored. Things felt flat; both characters and worldbuilding alike.

Maybe it was me, and maybe it was the book. But Shadow Frost was a let down and the hype and premise and cover alone wasn’t enough to keep me tethered to it.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone publishing for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review! All the following opinions are my own!

I don't know where to start with Shadow Frost, to be honest. I don't want to describe the plot too much because I don't want to give any spoilers away, but the gist of the thing is this-- Asterin is the princess of the kingdom of Axaria and she's one of the few people in the world to possess the power of multiple elements. (This world has elemental magic and each element is called an affinity. They also have affinity stones which kind of function like magic wands in this situation). Anyway, there's a big bad demon out to get everyone because someone decided to use the forbidden shadow element to summon it and it falls on Asterin and her posse to save the world. Well, more or less. There are details, but you'll find them out when you read the book.

When I started reading this book, the thing that bothered me the most was the pacing and the dialogue. The descriptions were actually pretty decent, but whenever the characters opened their mouths, unless it was exposition, anything they said was very awkward and unnatural. It was the same with the description of certain actions. And the plot doesn't even start moving until we'll past 30% of the book. I came very close to DNFing the book at this time just because it didn't interest me as much.

But, I ploughed through.

And I have to say, I am pleasantly, if mildly, surprised at how the book turned out. The writing kept getting better with each couple of chapters. The action flowed smoother, the dialogue a little more natural. The characters were good enough that I cared a little by the end. This story did really turn it around, y'all!

Objectively speaking, however, the story didn't really bring anything ground breaking to the genre of YA fantasy. It is pretty much by the numbers in how it progresses and the "twist" in the book is something anyone who has read a few series' can figure out pretty early on. I don't know if this was intentional, but the book also heavily drew from certain elements of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and that was pretty interesting.

I actually really liked the writing style of the book. The prose was lush, it was soft, it wasn't overly descriptive, in my opinion, even though it did lose direction every once in a while. There was this thing the writer did where she redid scenes from multiple perspectives one after the other, or dove into the backstory of a certain chacater quite suddenly and that stuff was a bit discomforting to read. Also, yes, the dialogue needed a <i>lot</i> of work. It was just very unnatural and weird and clunky, and it made me cringe so hard at times. Especially when it involved the romance. Like... No, thank you.

My biggest problem with this book was that it didn't need to be pure fantasy. I feel like the writer's style and the way the chacaters behaved and the way they spoke- and by that I mean the language they adopted, which was very modern-esque and felt very out of place in a fantasy world-- were so much better suited for an urban fantasy. This book would've been bumped up a star if this was just an urban fantasy novel with a bunch of paranormal elements instead of trying to be an epic fantasy series. There was no proper world building, anyway, so I don't see why not??

All in all, it was a fun experience, especially the last quarter of the book. I saw that the author had written this book when she was 15 and that's just incredible, in my opinion. The talent of the author clearly shines through, even if the book itself is a bit meh. Shadow Frost was pretty good for a draft, imo, but it needed tons of edits and I hope the finished copy has them! I'm not too keen on finishing the series right now, but I would be very interested in picking up anything else Coco Ma might put our in the future!

I enjoyed this one! It was quick to read and the characters were so fun. I think the author did a really good job writing a compelling story in the world that she created.

This was a rather slow read for me which makes it difficult to get into the story and remain there so I found myself putting it down often and picking it back up later. I will say though I did really enjoy the magic system! It was incredibly elaborate and unique with many elements that I really liked. I think playing into this Shadow Frost also had a very rich world! One of my favorite things in a book is excellent world building, so the fact that this one was so rich made my heart skip a beat. One of my main drawbacks in this book was the multiple POV and many characters to keep track of. When I finally figured out who was who it was also a little disconcerting that a lot of the story revolved around romance, I prefer it to be a little more subtle but that's obviously a personal preference. I just like stories that focus more on the plot and characters and less on their romance with each other. Overall this was an enjoyable read!

i don't know if it's the format of this or something, but i found it extremely difficult to get through this book. Not to mention I just... didn't really care about the main characters and what they were doing?

3/5 stars

Even though I liked the world building and elaborate magic system in this YA fantasy, this was a very slow read for me and I found myself putting it down a few times. There were certain elements that kept pulling the reader away from the main story including an abundance of characters, multiple POV and the fact that every character was coupled or trying to be romantically paired off with another character. All of these particular parts of the book drew away from the overall plot and story. It also took away pages that could have been used to getting to know specific characters even more. However, I still liked the overall story and world and plan on reading the next books in the series.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for allowing me the opportunity to read a free ARC.

Shadow Frost was okay. I liked the main idea with the elemental magic, the characters were funny and there where twists here and there to surprise you. But some things and the relationships between the MCs were too rushed for my liking. Maybe a young reader could enjoy it more.

Love YA Fantasies? 

In this epic start what seems will be an strong series, we are introduced into a world full of fierce princesses, evil demons, and secret ploys. There is a ton of magic that will keep you on the edge of your seat while also navigating the craziness that is this world. 

A lot is going on in the background, but it isn't to where I was too overwhelmed by the story. I overall enjoyed it and gave it a solid 4 out of 5 stars. 

It does feel like the typical YA fantasy worlds we've come to love, but I didn't feel like I was just repeating another book all-together. The twists and turns will keep you on your toes, so watch out for this one!

I really enjoyed this book although there were times when I wished things had gone differently. I think children would really enjoy this book as it covers all aspects: there is magic, mystery, relationships, battles and family issues to be resolved. It is action packed with an interesting storyline. I will certainly read the next book. This book ended on a true cliffhanger and makes you want to go out and buy the next.

Thank you so much to the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book!!!


I LOVED it!!! This was such a fun and adventure filled book that had me addicted from beginning to end! I love the magic system and how its based off of the elements and using stones to amplify these powers. The flow of the writing and the character development was fantastic. I love books where there are a group of unlikely heroes who come together to accomplish the impossible with a plan that is conceived without any hope of it working out but somehow it does! This book reminded me of a Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, or The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi. There are plots and evil doers who must be unveiled, love is found among our motley crew of misfits, friendships are formed, and so much more happens in these pages and it was a fantastic journey to be taken on!

The only complaint I would have would be that its sometimes hard to figure out who's point of view you are reading from when they change. Sometimes I would be thinking I was reading from Asterin, only to figure out its actually Luna. Or I would think I was reading from Orion's POV but it was actually Eadric. This threw me off and I found myself going back and rereading entire pages because I just put together who I was reading about at the time. Other than this one small thing, the rest of the book was so fantastically written and I think I am now a Coco Ma fan!!!

I love me a YA fantasy and this didn’t disappoint! An interesting plot, decent pacing, a fresh world, and entertaining characters!

I loved this book so much! I'm so impressed that Coco Ma wrote this when she was 15 and had it published at age 19, because I NEVER would have been able to have such an amazing accomplishment like that! I loved the magic system because not only was it elemental magic, but it was really well explained with clear boundaries as to what is and is not possible. I enjoyed that each kingdom had an affinity to a specific element, but people from each kingdom could have affinities to multiple elements in addition to the one their kingdom is known for.

I also really enjoyed the pacing even though there were some slow parts around the halfway mark, but in that slow section we got to really get to know the characters and their personalities. The connection and friendship between all the characters was so great, and I think that people who are fans of the friend groups in Six of Crows or The Gilded Wolves would really enjoy this book. The banter between the characters, especially Asterin and Quinlan was A++ and I couldn't stop chuckling at some of the comments they made to each other.

I was afraid that there was going to be a love triangle, but I was surprisingly pleased when I realized that that was NOT going to happen. There is a great slow burn romance, and two of the characters start out already in a relationship together so it was nice to see the contrast between those two relationships. And the third relationship was honestly really sweet as well!

Each of the characters grows so much and I'm so excited to see where they go in the next book, which I wish I had in my hands now because I just need to know what happens! This was such a fantastic debut novel and I highly recommend it!

I’m not sure what it was but this book felt very underdeveloped and fell flat for me.


</i>**I was sent an e-arc copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This in no way affects my rating or review. </i>

This was one fantastic way to kick off a new YA fantasy series. It has a little something for everyone. The high-fantasy and epic storytelling of Throne of Glass. The supportive #squadgoals of The Lunar Chronicles. And the tragic backstories of Six of Crows.

Largely because of the multiple POV format, by the end it is kind of hard to say there are “main” and “secondary” characters. They’re all an ensemble cast.

It’s honestly astonishing to me that this was written by a teenager. Coco Ma’s writing capabilities can outshine even the most experienced of writers. She was born to write.

This series will likely become my new obsession. This was my 96th book read in 2019 and it has shot right to the top of my favourites list.

A heart-stopping adventure with twists I did not see coming, this book was exceptional.

I ADORED this books!!! Shadow Frost is packed with high stakes, an ensemble of characters, and an unforgettable, intriguing world.

Let me first say I do not particularly enjoy writing this review but I still feel it is my duty as a reviewer. We are all different and NO ONE reads a book the same way. I don’t mean to offend anyone I just wasn’t a particular fan of this book…

Shadow Frost is written by Coco Ma when she was just 15 years old (!). She is now 19. Shadow Frost takes place in the kingdom of Axaria. It follows Asterin, heir to the throne and her friends who sets off on a mission to kill a demon which is ravaging the kingdom.

I must say Shadow Frost started out really well with the prologue. It was dark mysterious and captivating but from chapter one it only went one way… (maybe Coco Ma wrote the prologue when she was 19?) I think my first problem with the books was the characters. Maybe there was simply too many characters or maybe there was too many point of views (there was seven in total) or maybe it was a third thing. I just never connected with them. I didn’t care whether they lived or died. The characters were as mess. Their character traits didn’t correspond with their age. For example Orion who is Asterin’s personal guard (which he is pretty bad at) was supposed to be in his twenties but acted like young teenager. It just didn’t make sense.

Another thing that just didn’t work for me was the plot. I loved the idea of the plot and I read the book because og its synopsis. But while reading, the storyline seemed really messy and not thought through. Some times the story progressed really slowly and other times it felt rushed. In the end the story turned out way different than I had expected and not in a good way. The plot was too predictable and with too many cliches. The characters seemed shallow and their actions impetuous.

Something else that didn’t help with the plot or the characters were the writing. There were several awkward transitions between the different points of views and a couple of flashbacks that wasn’t so smooth incorporated either. As well, a lot of the dialogue was hackneyed and pretty cliche. Sadly this didn’t help with my perception of the characters as they just seem even more naive and untested.

Lastly, I have to comment on the love interests. I didn’t get any of them. How can you fall in love with a person you barely know? Sorry but that seems ridiculous to me. There isn’t any kind of action which can justify these love interest. They were just out the blue. And I am usually a sucker for romance in YA fantasy even the most cheesy ones, but these just didn’t work for me.

Was there anything that I liked? Well I liked the idea of this book. I liked the premise of the plot but it just didn’t follow through. I also liked the cover. That was two things. 😉

No seriously, I feel like Coco Ma care a lot for her book (as she should) and a lot for here characters but they just doesn’t reach its audience. This whole amazing world and characters are all imagined in her head but they are not converted successfully to words on paper which is truly sad. Therefore, only one star from me.