I liked the bones of this story. Set up, magic to move about the world and different realms. Good stuff. The flirting between Violet and Aleksander is good. Enjoy the idea of a bloodline curse to feed a god who has twisted things. But the ending kinda just happened. Didn't leave me feeling any kinda way about things in the end.

I really enjoyed this book. The whole fantasy element was really well written and had sucked me into the story. I read through this book really quickly but it took me a little while to pick it up.

Would recommend

To be honest, I really disliked this book. The writing and plot felt so disjointed and it was hard to care about the characters. The world building felt lacking and at times the author tried to make her writing sound more mysterious and/or pretentious, which just didn’t work for me.

The craziest part was when Violet basically recreated all of Marianne’s research….in a few months while it took Marianne a decade. For someone who went from knowing nothing, this was just a huge stretch, no matter how much “talent” she had.

The City of Stardust was a solid 4/5 stars for me. In this story, you follow along the story of Violet Everly. Violet's mom abandons her as a young girl and mysteriously leaves. As Violet grows into adulthood she becomes curious about her mom and decides to look for her. In the process, she uncovers a whole bunch of family secrets. A handsome magical scholar is there to help her in her journey or so she thinks.

-magical scholar
-family curses
-poetic/descriptive writing
-astral gods
-subplot of romance

The only reason this isn't 5 stars is due to a few pacing issues.

thanks to netgalley, Georgia summers, and the publishing company for an arc copy!!

This book was a little hard for me to get into at first, but the more i read the more i wasn’t to stay immersed in the story. i do think the beginning was very slow, and i want to know more about the world. it wasn’t as atmospheric as the name suggested and that was a bit of a disappointment for me

I received an ARC from NetGalley-
This book fell so flat for me! I didn’t feel connected with the characters at all and while the plot was interesting it got repetitive and confusing the keep everyone’s names straight.
Overall I don’t think this book was bad, but definitely not for me

Here is my review of The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers. Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.
The best way to get me to read a book is by the cover. The cover for The City or Stardust was stunning and immediately made me click the link for the arc and read the description. It was an instant push of the button to ask for an arc I was so intrigued.

Reading it though was a little bit of a let down. There was so much potential but the execution was poor.

There’s a curse on the Everly family line that one child in every generation pays for it with their life but no one can remember why. It seems like Marianne Everly is going to be our main character but she disappears through a magic door and we don’t see her again.
The main story is about Violet Everly who is being raised by her uncles since her mother disappeared. She’s be raised in the dark of all the secrets around her moms disappearance and is homeschooled and not allowed out to do anything.
One day someone named Penelope shows up with her assistant Alexander and Penelope makes a deal with Ambrose (Violets uncle) that if Marianne isn’t found in 10 years then she will be taking Penelope.
From here is where things get confusing. There’s so many different POVs some we figure out who it is and other times it’s just an ominous character that we don’t know what they’re doing.
There’s also no breaks in the paragraphs or any type of acknowledgement that POVs have changed or we are in a different time or place so I had to reread a lot of the chapters and I was still left confused half the time.
The story skips almost 10 years and Alexander pretends to run into Violet at a coffee shop to gain info for Penelope on where her mom is at but she has no idea.
From this, Violet starts to learn about the magic that runs in her family and about whole new worlds but she can’t ask her uncles any questions because they won’t tell her.
But on accident, she finds out about the deal made with Penelope and she runs away from home to try and find her mom. Throughout the rest of the book, there’s absolutely no personal growth and I feel like there’s too much going on for this girl that’s never left her house before except the coffee shop.
She tries to find all these people that know her mom, she steals, she’s breaks and enters, she pretends to be other people to get all this info and we are still lost on the story at this point.
Alexander betrays her a few times.
We don’t find out until the last 50 or so pages what is actually going on with this book and what the point was and the epilogue was an absolute waste of time.
I was seriously disappointed. I probably won’t read book 2.

I wanted so badly to love this book as the gorgeous cover lured me in. While the author writes lovely prose, the characters lack substance and feel quite cliched. The storyline is hollow and it was a struggle to keep reading. I know what I have is an ARC, but the formatting was very off-putting and it was difficult to understand when the point of view was changing from character to character.

The City of Stardust was a whimsical fantasy story that I could not put down. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the night circus.

This book is beautifully written, like gorgeous. I fell in love with the world building and the characters. I found the story to be super magical but had a darker edge to it that I loved. I need more from this author! Thank you so much for the opportunity and I cant wait to read what comes next!

The City of Stardust was an interesting read. This contemporary fantasy definitely has some darker elements to it. This one is perfect for fans of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and Daughter of Smoke and Bone. The world in this book is full of dark scholars, ancient beings, blood rituals, and magic

The story follows Violet Everly as she tries to find her mother. The Everly’s are a cursed family plagued by a mysterious woman named Penelope. Penelope takes the best of the Everly’s every generation, and her current choice has gone missing. She gives Violet ten years to find her mother, or Violet will have to take her place.

Aleksander, Penelope’s assistant, is another main character. He wants to make Penelope happy so he can become a scholar. However the more he learns about Penelope, the less he wants to follow her orders.

There are also stories mixed into the book, sort of like fairytales. I loved seeing how they related to the main story. It was cool to see how they came together at the end.

I enjoyed the overall story, but at times I would get a little bored. The biggest turnoff I had was the violence to children in the book. Nothing was too explicit, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

I liked Violet and Aleksander, and Penelope was a genuinely great villain. The mythology of this world was pretty cool too.

It took me a bit to get through and settle into the story and writing style but I found the world and plot absolutely compelling!

It was good for a little while but after I just didn't want to pick it up anymore. I dnfed at 45%
I will try again another time

Thank you for this arc

I didn't like it. I didn't like Violet and would have found the story more interesting if we had more from Violet’s uncles side than what we do get.

Summer's prose is lovely but the plot was a struggle.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. I'm sorry this one just wasn't for me.

I received an advanced copy of The City of Stardust from Netgalley and the publisher and am leaving this review voluntarily.

I've read a lot of books lately that haven't piqued my interest the way I thought they would, and The City of Stardust is one of them. Unfortunately, this is another book that will be crowding the pile of book disappointments, AKA the unfinished pile.

Don't get me wrong, I believe some people will really like this book, but I wasn't one of them. The plot was confusing, the characters lacked depth, the world-building was vague at best, and the writing was overindulgent. Ultimately, it felt like the author was keeping information from me for the sake of keeping information. Nothing made sense because so many key details were missing.

The characters were utterly lackluster. I couldn't have cared less about any of them, which in turn made me not care about the story. Though I feel I'm being overly harsh, The City of Stardust wasn't doing what the summary said it did. I didn't feel that "seductive" pull it says I would. I was left confused by the world and not seduced, although Violet seemed seduced very quickly, though I have no idea why since I had no grasp of her motivations or personality.

The City of Stardust is a book I thought I would like. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it as the "spellbinding" story it was supposed to be.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

First - this is a multi-POV and as of this ARC there are not always clear distinction of a change of POV, which leads to confusion in parts. I found myself backing up to establish whose POV was actually being done.

The world-building is just okay. The writing, however, is wonderful. There is so much potential here that I am honestly interested in a re-read of the final product of this book .

The story is interesting. The characters are simply okay - nothing greatly significant about any of them. There certainly could be more character development, especially with the support characters to establish them more fully in the story. Also the MFC needs to show growth - which she doesn't really. In this it is hard to relate to her for the book.

However, overall.....I did enjoy this and I will be looking for the final version.

This was so magical and so whimsical and incredibly reminiscent of books that I used to read growing up. If you enjoy books with compelling characters and even more compelling plot, please pick this one up, you won’t regret it!

This book landed somewhere in the middle for me. I wanted to completely get swept away and while it didn't do that, it was intriguing enough for me.

I loved the beautiful writing in this book. It was lyrical and whimsical. Sadly, I did find the characters and their development less interesting and a bit one dimensional. I will definitely keep an eye out for future work by this author because again the prose itself was beautiful, but the story just wasn't it for me.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed the story of Violet Everly who enters a dark and magical underworld of power hungry scholars to break her family's curse. After her mother set out to stop the curse but doesn't return, Penelope gives Violet an ultimatum, find her mother or the curse will fall on her. She agrees to descend down to the underworld accompanied by Penelope's assistant Aleksander to find her mother. Aleksander helps her and she begins to trust him though she knows she shouldn't. But the world of power hungry scholars and fickle gods are bent on revenge, and Violet must navigate through the edges of the world to find her Mother and the key to to the city of stardust.
It is a bit of a slow burn, and some of the relationships were frustrating, but all in all it was a fun read.