The thing I love about fairy-tale retellings or reimaginings is that there are so many perspectives and twists to take. This YA novel, told from the witch and the bewitched, explores the price of magic, abuse and curses. This isn't an easy read and is definitely dark but its one readers won't forget.

Well, this is a hard book to rate and review. Technically speaking, the pacing was all over the place and the tone of the story switches from whimsical slightly nonsensical fairy tale to high fantasy in a matter of few pages. The characters didn't have the depth I was hoping they would and there were plot holes that were a bit jarring to notice.

Now that that's out of the way, I still couldn't put down the book. I finished it in less than 24 hours and by the end of it, I felt a kind of vindicative satisfaction and sometimes that's reason enough for a 4 star.

The characters, while they don't have the depth I was expecting, were flawed all the same

It was the kind of book where I wasn't specifically attached to any character but still somehow the situations and the prose made me feel all the emotions.

There's just something about women coming together to fight against the society that tries to hold them down and it may be an overdone 'trope' in fantasy and an absolute cliche but I will still love it.

TW: sexual assault, mentions of rape, emotional abuse and neglect, sexism, victim blaming, trauma and dissociation, PTSD, gaslighting

This book took the fairy tale vibes a bit too far for me. While the premise intrigued me enough to pick it up, I found the worldbuilding to be mostly surface level and the characters sort of interesting but not really keeping my attention. I also really disliked that all of the struggles came back to a rape which felt entirely unnecessary and provided nothing (in my opinion) to the story overall. It was what ultimately pushed this one off my shelf. It’s marketed as a feminist fairy tale but frankly it felt like lip service by the time I was done reading. Can’t recommend.

I think younger me, when I was deeply into fairytales and would inhale anything involving them, would have maybe loved this, but adult me wasn’t very entertained. And I am still a young adult, 22, technically part of the target audience. It was just an odd magic system and a bit slow and didn’t stand out among the really well done retellings I’ve read.

This book was interesting! I liked the feminist writing intertwined with the fairytale-like storyline. It was a bit slow at first, but I enjoyed seeing how the characters interacted and where the plot took the story.

I personally did not get into this one but. do think others might connect to this one more. Overall giving it three stars.

I really wanted to love this one but unfortunately it fell short of my expectations. I just didn't really care about the characters and I found the magic system to be somewhat confusing. The writing was done well and the pacing was good, but I value character development over even plot, and I just wasn't connecting.

I wasn't able to enjoy this the way I thought I would. The world building didn't give me enough as well as not very well fleshed out magic system or characters that made me care about the story.

I basically read the entirety of this novel in one sitting because I simply could not put it down. This is a well thought out book and an extremely well executed book.

Sign me up for all the feminist fairytale retellings (I'm absolutely loving this new trend in the publishing world)! Ever Cursed was such a unique fantasy novel -- I can't wait to read more from this author!

I have to admit that I was hoping for a different book with EVER CURSED. I just couldn't get into as I thought I would.

I almost didn't like it because it was too real? If that makes sense. It was a great book, so well written and clever but OOF it was heavy and I wasn't expecting that. Still fantastic. I'm definitely recommending it to my students because it has a strong message of reclaiming your power and fighting systems of oppression through collective action.

Unfortunately, this one just wasn't for me. The premise was good, the pacing of the book was good, but I just did not care about these characters or their world at all. The world-building left me unsatisfied, and the characters didn't go deeper than surface level which was disappointing. The magic system was also quite confusing and never quite fully explained. The synopsis proclaimed to be a feminist fantasy, but other than the fact that all the protagonists were female, I didn't really get a feminist vibe from it. Overall, I did not enjoy this one.

I loved it! The book cover was beautiful and once I got into it (it was initially hard for me to get into), I realized this book was actually pretty good. My opinion shifted of this book as the book progressed.

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

This book was okay, I felt the plot could have been better.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

I've got 14 pages left, but I'm calling it. I can't take it anymore. For the first time in many years, I don't want to leave a review for a book. I know what the author tried to do. I appreciate what the author tried to do. I hate the execution with a passion.

Trigger warnings: sexual harassment, rape, eating disorder, parent abuse

Because of the content matter, this review will have spoilers.

[I genuinely would like to forget this book exists because of how much I loathed the direction it took. What started out as somewhat whimsy and quirky fell into a dark and shocking territory that I do not want to read. It felt jarring, weird, and wholly uncomfortable. The synopsis is rather misleading and I promise now that I do not want, now or ever again, to read a book that tries to be dark and edgy while tackling patriarchy by centering the plot around rape.

The premise of the story is that a witch cursed five princesses with spells of without. One cannot eat, one cannot sleep, one cannot remember, etc. And now they have but a few days to break the spell. At first, I was enchanted with this. Witch magic works in such a way that every spell cast gives them a new skirt. Silk for light spells and heavy burlap for the big spells. And the curses themselves seemed intriguing and were written in a whimsical way. Not unhealthy, but just I don't need to eat. Turns out, no. This girl is emaciated to the point she is impossibly thin, and when she meets princes for the first time, they like it. She is a girl who can break, who can be bent to their whims. That was where it lost me. 90% of the characters in here are disgusting pigs who see these girls as something to manipulate for sexual and nefarious gain.

The plot never went anywhere. I was so bored because half of it was just people being too scared to act, too eager to strike a woman down, or too wrapped up in arguing about the same things. They're meant to collect items to break the curse, and yet it felt as though it was barely part of the story itself. It leaned too far into the effort to be shocking with the actions of the men that it forgot to give the story an actual purpose. The magic system, which felt overly complicated and difficult to follow, did not help matters.

Where I really should have DNF'd is the reveal that the whole spell came about because the king once raped the witch's mother. This terrible curse was cast as revenge, but shocker, the king is a filthy, privileged man who gets what he wants whenever he wants and oppresses everyone around him. He doesn't give a crap, and I hated having to read it. Even his own daughters. Jane will die if the curse can't be broken and he's totally cool with that. Heck, let me even lock you in a tower to keep you from trying to save yourself. As a villain, he felt so cookie-cutter and predictable. Meant to outrage, but not in the way it should have. Yes, rape is the center of this book and I LOATHED IT.

This was a preachy book that served only to piss me off. It tried to do a new twist on smashing the patriarchy and missed the mark entirely for me. It has a misleading cover and synopsis and honestly, good riddance. There are several books out there in similar tone and material that handled sexual harassment and smashing the patriarchy a hundred times better, like Damsel by Elana K. Arnold, and I'm going to stick with those.

Unfortunately I didn't really click with this one and I don't have any real explanation for it. There was nothing really wrong with it, everything was fine, I just didn't click.

I wanted to love this book so much but I simply couldn't.

Ever Cursed tells the stories of Jane, a young princess who has been cursed along with all of her sisters, and Reagan, the witch who cursed them. On the thirteenth birthday of Jane's youngest sister, the princesses receive their one chance to break the spell cast on them before Reagan turns eighteen, and the spell becomes permanent. But on their quest to break their curse, Jane and her sisters learn the truth about the kingdom they are meant to govern but have never set foot into, and are forced to confront the truth in their very own home.

While I understand and admire what Corey Ann Haydu was trying to achieve in Ever Cursed, the book itself simply didn't deliver. At the heart of the story, there is a condemnation of the patriarchy and a message about the power women hold, together and apart, but the way the message is written was, to put it bluntly, not great. The pacing never felt right, some characters simply seemed unnecessary, and the compelling side characters weren't given enough screen time. More than anything, though, I think this book is marketed incorrectly - while the world building takes inspiration from fairy tales and tries to subvert them, this is a story about abuse and healing, which creates different expectations going in.

A great read and thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to to read this book. I would highly recommend reading this book.

Though I tried to finish and enjoy this book, I believe that this particular story may not be for me. As I do not think it is fair to the author or publisher to post a review of a book I was unable to finish, I will refrain from reviewing this particular title.