There was a lot of world building in this book. A lot. But, I liked it. That wasn't a deal breaker for me. I enjoyed reading about the magic, curses, demons, etc. What I didn't love was Gemma. She was a hard one to root for at times. I do feel like she was better toward the end so I have high hopes that she'll be more likeable in the next book.

This book just wasn’t for me. I felt like the pacing was a little too slow and I never found myself eager to pick the book back up. It wasn’t the writing that I didn’t care for but the development of the story.

Lady Gemma Ashbourne seems to have the perfect life but her reality is anything but perfect. When Talan d'Astier comes into her life, one bargain changes the course of their lives.

I had never read Furyborn so I was really excited to read this novel. I thought the plot was interesting; I liked the idea of Gemma being the only one with no magic and her relationship with Talan intrigued me as well.

However, when I read the novel I found it difficult to care about the characters and parts of the novel bore me. The writing style and narrative didn't hook me in and the plot confused me at times.

This is my first book by Claire Legrand and have seen very positive things about this author! I was really pumped to get an e-arc of this book and start reading it! That being said, I really struggled through this book. I personally had a hard time connecting with Gemma (FMC) and couldn’t get past the writing style. Once the pace of the book picked up (way too late) I enjoyed it a little more!

Something I think Claire Legrand does super well is create characters that you’re not sure about. Do I like them? Do I hate them? Do I sympathize with them? Are they good, bad, morally grey?

Gemma is a third daughter of a magical family
who is not only missing magic, it makes her sick. She finds out her family and a rival family were pitted against each other by a demon and decides to take her fate into her own hands.

This book has a unique magic system that isn’t super difficult to make sense of like some fantasy worlds, which is my favorite type. The world feels old fashioned but the values don’t (Aka there are no noblewomen expected to remain virginal) which I love.

Between this book and the furyborn trilogy, I think I’ll read anything Claire writes.

Imogen Ashbourne, twenty, was not born with the magic her family line had been bestowed with. Centuries ago, her family was one of hundreds chosen by the gods to be the guardians of Edyn. It was the time of the Unmaking, when the gods left Edyn but bestowed the chosen families with magic in their image. Imogen not only lacks magic herself, but it actually harms her. At age eight, her frail state led to events that forever changed her family. Guilt – and the avoidance of its existence – now cloud her outlook on life. Imogen was meant to leave with the Warden and serve in the Order of the Rose. Danger lurks in the mist, and in Imogen’s stead, her beloved sister Mara now serves. Imogen’s father loves her, but he is increasingly distant with her. He has no such issues with Imogen’s oldest sister Farrin, whose serious demeanor often clashes with Imogen’s tendency toward frivolity. She enjoys fashion and parties. In another attempt to assuage her feelings of guilt, she decides to throw party. Something happens that night when she experiences magical abilities for the first time. It is a brief peak, but that knowledge is devastating. She begins to think beyond the pretty dresses and lavish attentions that have occupied her time. She wonders if she might be able to do something about her abilities and her family’s curse. It sets off an alliance and an adventure in a wonderfully defined world of magic.

The story is wonderfully imagined and well-written.

I found the premise of this book highly intriguing. A girl from a magic family who is hurt by the presence of magic. A family feud fueled by a demon, and a mad attempt to end it. But the story didn't deliver. The prose felt overdone and too long. I found myself skimming paragraphs to skip past the long sections of the characters inner dialogue which was highly redundant, searching for the moments when things actually happened.
And then when things started to pick up they took a sudden turn into what felt like a completely unrelated plot. It did circle back around eventually but I spent several chapters wondering what exactly this had to do with the rest of the story.
And even though the plot was more or less resolved at the end (leaving room for subsequent books in the series) I didn't feel like any of the questions the book had started with had been answered. We were left in much the same place at the end as we were in the beginning, which made the whole thing feel unsatisfying.

It took me a while to digest this enough to craft a written review. I have very conflicting emotions about A Crown of Ivy and Glass. I really liked the world that was created and the concept of the humans with magic and the Greenways. The best characters were side characters (sister, best friend, sister's best friend). I did not love the main character and that's because, as someone who struggles with mental health, I did not like reading her perspective. I feel like her storyline glorified mental health as something that everyone dropped everything to help her with. I think there were better ways to approach this. It's an interesting concept to have a heroine with mental health and chronic illness issues, but I found her weak and unlikable. Every time you thought she was coping or overcoming, she ended up back in her bed being taken care of. SPOILERS AHEAD: Then, suddenly she was super powerful and majestic and then it was abruptly ripped away. I also didn't like her romance because it felt to wishy-washy. My one other major critique was the breadth of magical beings included. It went from gods gifting magic to including chimeras and necromancers and demons. It was a lot. I would be interested to see how the story evolves in future books, but this one wasn't really for me.

Thank you to Claire Legrand and NetGalley for the ARC.

I had a really hard time getting into this book and it felt like a bit of a struggle to continue it, which I'm sure wasn't helped by how long the book is. Gemma left a lot to be desired as a main character and none of the characters successfully made me care about them.

This often felt like several different books struggling to come together. Much of the premise is fantastic, a Regency fantasy vibe but with a sex-positive female character who lives with chronic pain. Gemma isn’t always likable, and I’m here for that, but unfortunately the choppy storyline made it hard to fully connect with her. I also didn’t feel the romance, the insta-love always felt like a throw-in.

The mythology has promise, with an interesting magic system, but there were too many competing elements. Moments would build and then be resolved jarringly. There was too much here for one book, even at a hefty 550+ pages. With more concise editing, or spread over multiple books, I could have easily loved this. The last 20% did finally coalesce into a gripping finale that left me willing to pick up the next book in hopes that Legrand gets a better handle on this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy, all opinions are my own!

Seeing that this was pitched as ACOTAR meets Bridgerton, I was all in. Unfortunately, this just didn't deliver on any front for me.

I think the primary issue was the pacing. Being that this is 500 pages, some plot points felt too rushed, and others felt like they dragged on without ever being fully explored/resolved.

This was my first ARC and I struggled with getting into the book so thoroughly that this review is coming after publication. I know others LOVE Claire, so I'm still going to check out her other series because I'm hoping this is just a one off!

It should have been called a crown of beauty and disdain because honestly, it was hard to get into and felt like a knock off version of ACOTAR with characters I didn't really care about. Also the ending was predictable and disappointing.

Let’s talk about A Crown of Ivy and Glass by Claire Legrand. Her adult novel debut that follows Gemma, the one person in her family without powers. In fact, any interaction with magic causes her great pain. After meeting Talan at a party, he convinces her to help him in exchange for helping her destroy a rival family.

I was incredibly excited to read this book. When it is advertised as an ACOTAR/Bridgerton style book, I was like “SIGN ME UP!”

This book was incredibly trope-y, I felt like the author tried to put as many fantasy romance cliches into this book as possible to the point where it did not feel unique. I found this book predictable, but at the same time disappointed at the lack of explanations for many things. Apparently, there’s a huge feud between Gemma’s family and another family, but it was barely touched on and there could have been more content related to this. I found the characters bland, for the most part they would only talk about one or two different things. Gemma gives the vibe of a “pick me” girl, instead of the strong female main character I was expecting. If I had to read one more sentence about her saying how her life was so unfair, but that she was this beautiful creature that all the men wanted, one more time I would have chucked my Kindle across the room.

Rating: 2.5 ⭐️. I had high hopes for this book, but it had too many plot points that made the story feel like it was jumping all over the place. This book was unnecessarily long especially with characters that could have been a copy paste from any early-mid 2000s YA book. This book would have probably done better split in half because it does read two separate stories. I think this book has a lot of potential, but in the end it just fell flat for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love that with each book, Claire Legrand takes on something new.  A Crown of Ivy and Glass is the first in a romantasy trilogy.  I believe each book will be from the point of view of a different sister.

Gemma is a great heroine for the first book.  At first, she seems shallow and silly, only concerned with her appearance and her family’s wealth.  But there’s so much more to her: she has chronic pain and deep trauma.  And there’s so much character growth throughout the novel.

I loved the magic and worldbuilding in this one.  It feels completely lived in, and the Mist is both creepy and beautiful.  Reading this book felt lush and green and spooky.  I’m a big fan of fantasy that incorporates a little horror.

The romance in this didn’t really work for me, which is what’s kept it from being a 5-star read, but I loved the rest of the book anyway.  I’ll definitely be continuing with the trilogy.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for my review copy of this book.

Overall. I liked this book. It wasn't one that I lost sleep because I had to stay up and read, but it was still an enjoyable fantasy. There are some darker aspects that would push this out of YA, but the romance itself felt a little on the immature side for an adult fantasy.

I think the thing I liked the most was how unique the magic system was. It was a very different take on something that most fantasy novels include. It made this book unique so that it stands apart in the genre. I did think that it was very cliche with everything else in the genre though. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, because when I want a comfort fantasy novel, that's what I go for.

I'm not kidding when I say first off how much I hated this book. I was gaslighting MYSELF the entire time telling myself it was not as bad as I thought, and I slogged through every single one of the 560 (!!!!!) pages and I learned reading this that I really need to stop reading books and just DNF things I hate and save myself the light torture.

First off, this is apparently an adult novel but reads like horrible YA- from the awful lead character who is the worst kind of spoiled brat, to the tragically boring love at first sight with the bad boy leading male. None of the characters seem to grow, the characters that you're actually interested in barely get any time in the novel, and I still can't even tell you what happened because literally nothing happens for most of the book.

This is partially my fault, because while I got through Furyborn, I DNF'd halfway through the second book of that series and I think Claire just loves writing large, boring books that could easily be 1/2 or 2/3 the size. I did like Furyborn a lot more than I liked any part of this book though, and will absolutely not touch another one of her books so long as I live on this earth. I looked up some Goodreads reviews and it seems like most people seem to agree with the same problems I had with the novel, so I know I'm not crazy.

I hate writing bad reviews, and usually I chalk it up to the book just isn't for me, but this was just simply NOT a good book.

I really had a hard time with this one and I wanted to love it so badly!! But I made it about 20% in and I still did not have any attachment to the main character. I was mostly irritated and normally I would try to soldier through it but life is too short and this book was too long for that.

I received this ARC thanks to Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.



I have never read a Claire Legeand book, but I do enjoy the sci-fi/romance YA genre, so I look forward to one with an adult edge. Sadly, this came across very YA and was not able to keep my interest enough to finish the book.

The start of the book drew me in, and then my interest ebbed. I tried picking it up a few times, but page 134 was my finish line. I did, however, like the writing style and will investigate some of the YA books.

"A Crown of Ivy and Glass" is an ambitious debut novel by an author who, unfortunately, attempted to encompass too much within its pages. While the beginning of the book showed promise, the story progressively became choppier and less engaging.

One of the main issues with this novel is its juvenile narrative, which is surprising considering it is supposed to be an adult debut. The story's pacing is inconsistent throughout, making it difficult to immerse oneself in the plot fully. Additionally, the author crams multiple stories together incoherently, resulting in a lack of cohesion and direction. Furthermore, none of the characters truly stand out or undergo any meaningful development, leaving the reader feeling disconnected from their journey.

The protagonist, Gemma, is portrayed as an immature character who, although she does experience some nominal growth in addressing her own strength, fails to recognize the significance of the supportive community around her. In one instance, Gemma loses a friend, but instead of acknowledging her mistakes, she assumes her friend will continue supporting her unconditionally.

"A Crown of Ivy and Glass" attempts to tackle numerous themes and plotlines but ultimately falls short. The author's ambition seems to have hindered the execution of the story, resulting in a narrative that feels disjointed and lacks character development. Despite a compelling beginning, the book fails to maintain its momentum, leaving readers unsatisfied. This review is based on an eARC provided by NetGalley for an honest assessment.

DNF at 28%
I've picked this up and put it down to switch to something else multiple times. I don't find this to be something that has me interested in anything - plot or characters, unfortunately. I was really looking forward to it though.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca and Netgalley for the advanced copy.