Disclaimer: Thanks to Victory Editing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own

This is a total page-turner! Marika is a really strong main character who is on a wild journey and finds herself stuck between two opposite forces. The romantic undertones between the three leads is fun, too! There's also some dark magical elements that add some edge to the story. I definitely would not miss out on reading this book!

I'm a huge fan of romance but it felt very secondary in this novel, and I feel it easily could be taken out to tighten up the plot. I did love the idea of magic borne out of trauma, but wish the magic system could have been built upon.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Victory Editing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I love books about fantasy and magic, and A Cure for Magic by Talia Greer is definitely full of magic. It's the first book in new adult trilogy The Ardor Magic Cycle, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

What's unique about the world Greer has created in this book is that an Ardor's magical abilities are [usually 👀] born of tragedy, and not passed down genetically through families. I love how this shows that sometimes great things are born of pain; that one can take what happens to them, harness the loss and grief, and turn it into something with astounding power.

I'll be honest about the rest of the book, though. I had a little bit of difficulty feeling any kind of emotion while reading this. I also felt some of the characters, while unique, lacked depth. (The exceptions are the antagonists, all of whom I felt were done well.)

Part of what goes into my ratings are the emotions I experience while reading a book, and how likely I'll come back to reread it. So while this book was a solid read with good writing, and one I'd still recommend, I didn't find anything that particularly stood out to me or called to me besides the magic system. Hence: 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).

I adored this book with every inch of my soul! I give it 5 stars. Lovely characters, storyline, amazing plot. Everything perfect!

This review is written after receiving an ARC of the book from NetGalley.

Overall, I enjoyed the premise of this book. I won’t lie when I say there was several instances in the beginning where I almost DNF’d it, but I persevered in the sake of seeing where it went.

This book was very clunky in the beginning, the fire, Juri almost killing Marika, it all was very garbled to me and I had a hard time having any connection to Marika for her plight. I think this was partially to do with the fact that the fire was basically the start of the book, and I personally hadn’t read enough of Marika as a character to gain attachment to her and thus really grasp how she might feel about the whole “world imploding” situation.

Also, the toss up of her feeling bad for the Ardors at the beginning never really felt like it came to full understanding and resentment from her about what her kingdom/family condones. There’s not really a scene in the book where I can define that Marika has realized how truly screwed up her world view has been. It’s hinted in various scenes, but I guess I was expecting more of a hard hitting realization especially once things started coming to light. The closest I can say is when she is talking to Ilsa and says “I’m your sister, but not the same one you once knew”.

It also didn’t make any sense to me that if Marika really had that resentment for the treatment of the Ardors, why does she not assume other members of her family are to blame besides Juri? Marika as a character is definitively family-driven, which would skew her from blaming them, but why only Juri is framed as the major source of blame doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Another thing that bothered me about this book is when Marika first meets Argent and is trying to control her power. Argent says “pain can help, at least it does for me. Helps you get a grip and stop wrecking shit”. To me, this was sort of an insinuation that pain should be used by Marika to control her power, and that just leaned too hard for me into issues of self-harm.

Additionally, the weird moments where Marika turns “princess” and acts like a spoiled brat were almost a little much to me. One instance that stands out is when Argent has tasked her with doing her laundry and chores, and Marika thinks “I will have to do servant work to maintain my safety?”. Like, in the context of having been thrown as much as she has, she still is showing tendencies of regressing into a brat who doesn’t want to do anything, and that for me takes away from the potential for Marika to be a character to look up to and admire as a leader and powerful Ardor.

Lastly, the romance as a whole felt completely unneeded in this book. You could take out the whole plot line of her kissing Argent and her escapades with Harland and it wouldn’t be missed. At the least, the whole kissing with Argent is too short lived, and made no sense to me, and I wouldn’t miss it if it were to be cut from the book.

On the positive side, I think this author is really attuned to describing Marika’s feelings, and her constant inner monologue. Marika as a character really has the potential to be a bada**, yet is drawn just short of the opportunity in this book. I think there is a lot to offer with the idea of this book, it just needs some oomph to really get the reader immersed into the world and characters more.

Overall, this book is slow to start, and definitely has a lot of room for improvement. But towards the end of the book I really started to see the authors vision for the plot and character arc, and it was much more enjoyable.

P.S. I saw the fact that Camille knew who Marika was right away, made no sense that the rebellion leader wouldn’t know if a royal was in the mix, especially after it was written about in the paper. Plus, it was easy to see how greedy she was for Marika to lean into her power.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book. This starts off showing the royal family, of which Marika is princess, treating people who have magic as less than. Marika realizes there are injustices and questions it but does not stop the horrible treatment. As a princess she is used to being spoiled and sheltered. She has a rude awakening when she is involved in a traumatic event which causes her own magic to come forth.

I almost DNF this a couple of times. There was a lot of repetition and Marika could be annoying and didn't show character growth through the story. It had a hard time keeping my interest, some of the situations or reactions just seemed off.

Apologies but I did have to DNF this book.

The premise sounds so amazing and I wanted to love it but the writing style isn’t for me. I am aware this is an uncorrected proof but the structure of the sentences didn’t flow and it was a bit jolting to read. The writing was repetitive and simple in a way that I couldn’t ignore. I unfortunately couldn’t get past the first chapter.

I hope that this book finds the right audience!