I really enjoyed the storyline in world building in the novel. I also really liked the characters. I thought this was a solid read, and I will definitely be reading more by this author.

I'm picky about urban fantasy, so I should have known I wouldn't like this one. I'd just heard so many good things about this author and this book, but it felt like a chore every time I tried to pick it up. So much info dumping and not enough character development for me.

This book caught me pretty quickly. I was drawn in by the cover and because I had heard some good things about the author's previous works. But this book definitely held my attention till the end.

I enjoyed her previous series better. This was terrible, however, the world-building surely made the plot kinda drag. And so it didn't feel like it was as sharp as it could've been.

I really liked the book ! The main character was liakable and I loved the plot ,I wish it was longer tho ,to enjoy it a little bit more

I really enjoyed this book, I gave it a 4 out 5 stars. I really liked the characters and the story line. I think it's cool that they lived in Indiana that's where I currently live and was surprised to hear that in the book.

As a hardcord Rin Chupeco fan I struggled through this. One review summed it up perfectly - like a new cook excited to make a new dish and so just throws in ALL THE INGREDIENTS and well, yeah. After reading the acknowledgements and finding this was actuall Rin's first book, it now makes a lot of sense. But all the exposition and info-dumping/myth merging was too much for even me!

Extra star for the Cheshire concept.

When reading the story at first I liked it and found a pretty easy to follow however quickly as the story progressed it became is more of a jumbled mess of stories and plots versus one cohesive piece. I think there’s a little too much going on here in terms of fairytales and fantasies tales and characters that aren’t fully described or flushed out, the plots seem to just go on top of each other but never really intermingle or mesh creating a cohesive story. With that being said I do like the premise and I think this plot has plenty of potential in the future if the author decides to do more however for me this book didn’t work as well as I thought it would .

This felt like poorly stacked world-building and unfinished ideas come to half-life. I DNF'd about 60% through as it felt so scattered and messy that it felt like work to read.

Since its publication, I've seen it revamped and, everytime, I want to pick it up again, and then I start, and then I remember, this wasn't for me.

Amazing cover art across the board though.

I wanted to like it. The world is confusing. Present day and fairytales sounds great but this is a jumbled mess. I was lost for a long time. Nothing interesting happened until like 200 pages in and even then there were so many characters I couldn’t keep track. This took me seven months to read. I’m sorry.

This book was ok. I don’t remember much so it didn’t stand out too much for me. I would probably read more of what this author has written but wouldn’t recommend this book to everyone.

I had such high hopes for this title. I absolutely loved the "Girl in the Well" series but found Wicked as you wish really hard to read. It did not keep my interest and when I put it down, I easily forgot about it and had no wish to go back to it.

Wow! Was this quite a fun ride! While it was a bit much to understand initially, the story soon developed into worlds that consumed you. The first quarter of the book was very info heavy,

The writing was phenomenal, well-paced, and at times lyrical. It was easy to identify the elements of classic fairy tales, which I found quite enjoyable.

I do hope that there will be further fleshing of the characters, as they felt a little stilted at times throughout the novel.

I look forward to the next installment and plan on making this available to my students!

I've read some of this author's previous books, but this one just didn't click with me and I ended up DNFing it. Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book!

Rep: Filipino

I usually enjoy books written by Rin Chupeco. But this one was just a hot mess. From the synopsis, there was everything to like. However, reading this book was a mission. The worldbuilding was extremely confusing and there were one too many elements to the story. I never felt like I got a good grasp on any of the characters. It took all the energy I had to focus on the main plot and get to the last page … and I still wouldn’t be able to tell you what happened in the story. I wish I could have enjoyed this book more because the potential and talent are there (along with some awesome representation). Unfortunately, the execution let it down for me, so I have to give it 1 star.

It’s probably more of a 2.5 but I’m rounding it up because of a good ending.

I’d been rejected for this ARC so many times that I thought I would have to wait a long time after the release to get it from the library. But then I got selected for Rin’s street team and got the advance copy and I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was. But after finishing the book, my enthusiasm has dulled a little.

The author has written at length on twitter about what this book means to her and why she wrote it, particularly considering it’s the first one she ever did, so I was very much moved by it all and wanted to read it as soon as I got it in my hands. But I guess sometimes we put too much expectations on our favorite authors and it doesn’t feel good when their books don’t live up to them. This is the 5th book by the author I’m reading and the first ever where I didn’t like the characters or the writing much.

I won’t deny that the themes the author discusses in this one are very important and her frustration with it all comes through very well. Draconian immigration and refugee policies, child separations and abuse, governments and corporations working hand in hand to deceive the common populace and exploiting resources to make profits, racism, homophobia - all of these issues are discussed and challenged and I felt all the emotions that the characters were feeling. But it’s the rest of the story that didn’t really connect with me.

There was really no direction as to where it was going, the characters just seemed to react to whatever was happening to them and didn’t seem to know much else. There were so many of them that I got quite confused for a while until I got used to them but none of them really felt compelling enough. There is a lot (and I mean a lot) of banter between the characters but it completely felt forced which disappointed me a lot. I really live for great banter and dialogue, and I just can’t get over how stilted and out of place most of it felt in this story. The author also tries to incorporate so many fairytales and myths into the narrative that it stopped making sense after a while and I couldn’t be bothered to know what it was leading towards. The last few chapters were action packed and quite cool and the epilogue ends on a very unexpected cliffhanger, so thankfully it ended on a better note than I thought it would.

To conclude, I don’t wanna diss on the book too much because it’s my favorite author but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. There are a lot of important themes discussed and the story has a lot of fairytales from around the world integrated, so if that fascinates you, maybe you should check it out. If you are fans of the author’s Bone Witch trilogy and are looking for something like that, then this is not it. The last line is a great hook to make me interested in the sequel, but it’s not gonna make any of my anticipated lists like this one did, and I still haven’t made up my mind if I wanna continue.

I was excited for this one but it was terribly slow. There was way too much world building and not a lot of anything else.

I really love Rin Chupeco writing and I cannot wait to read more. This book was really the thing I needed to come out of a reading slump

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an ARC of this book! This does not, in any way, affect my thoughts about the book.

I read this for Wikathon, my first time joining the readathon too, and I'm so so glad I read this first. It was such a dazzling, magical, and engrossing book!

I loved how Rin Chupeco was able to make fairytales and modern use of magic work while equipping such diverse and nuanced characters.

I haven't read many books with the found family trope, but it was so well executed here! As a Filipino reader who also loves fairytales and mythology, it gave me much delight to read the different references and how they interlaced so delicately into one fantastic adventure.

You, yes you, you NEED to read this.

This is a very ambitious book. An ambitious book that I really wanted to love cause I love fairy tales and magic and a story are merged with our world.

But it was incredibly heavy with information, a lot of which seemed to take away from the main plot of the narrative. To the point where I put it down before finishing because I felt as though the lore of the novel became more relevant than a tangible plot.

I salute the author for attempting it, but the editing needed to be a bit more forceful and structured.