Breathtaking and beautifully written. I couldn’t get enough.

Secrets, romance, magic—this book is unique and brilliant.

This is a book I wish I could forget and read, over and over, for the first time.

Rumplestiltskin meets Frozen in a gorgeous fantasy world that reminds me very much of The Netherlands or Denmark.
What would happen if a power that was intrinsically part of you would kill you the next time you use it? How do you cope when everyone around you wants to use that power, regardless of the consequences? And how do you know when someone truly cares for you instead of the power you have? Nadine Brandes handles all of these questions beautifully and I seriously love this book.
Myrthe and Bastiaan are the best and I love them. 10/10 recommend!

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher, all opinions are my own and a review was not required.

What a book! I loved reading Nadine Brandes’ most recent book, Wishtress! First of all, Bastiaan😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 (fangirl screaming). I still have no idea how to pronounce his name, but I am in love with him!!!! I loved how he had such amazing morals and deeply desired to do what was right. Though he did fail at times, he was willing to admit his wrongs and ask for forgiveness. I really need to know if he was able to fix his talent!!! (Iykyk)
Myrthe was an amazing heroine! She went through so much and tried to harden her heart but her actions proved that her heart was still tender. I loved reading about her story and how she was willing to give up her life for others!
And Runt! That one part at the end left me flabbergasted! Did not see that coming!!!!!
Another think I love about Nadine’s books is that they are so unpredictable! They keep me guessing the whole time and definitely do not follow any typical book stereotypes. This book did not disappoint! Near the end I kept thinking it was about to be over but it kept going lol😂
Anyway, this was an AMAZING BOOK! I am so thankful I was given the chance to read and review it!

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

I received this book for free from netgalley for an honest review.

Magic in all the best ways possible! So happy I got this.

This was a beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful story. Never having read Nadine Brandes, I had no idea what I was getting into, but she created a beautiful fantasy world. A girl whose tears grant wishes and a boy who can stop time find themselves caught in a war between how and if magic should be used. They have to learn to trust themselves and each other, and find hope that the well of magic tends toward goodness.

The story reminded me a little of Carol Beth Anderson's books and has cemented Nadine Brandes as an auto-buy author for me. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and have reviewed it willingly.

This was simply a delightful story to read. Brandes has a writing style that has you enthralled in the story and her characters from the first page. I always looked forward to picking it up and even though 450 pages, I would happily have kept reading it.

The story is clever, Myrthe and Baastian are wonderful creations, so easy to have empathy for and to feel their emotions throughout the story. And the bad guys are bad! Sven and Mattias display all those characteristics of the self-absorbed narcissist.

And then there's this brilliant reflection on good and evil, the wonder and beauty of the Holy Spirit and the river of life.

There were many moments that I wasn’t expecting, and our heroes were stuck in situations that I wondered whether they’d be able to get out. It was brilliant storytelling and how Brandes weaved the good and evil and river of life metaphors throughout the story was tremendous to experience.

I can't recommend Wishtress enough and was thrilled to have been able to read it.

I was fortunate to have received an early ebook copy last year from the publisher via NetGalley and have only now read it. This had no bearing on my review.

Spoiler alert! If you don't want spoilers, look away!

Disclaimer: I received this book as an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review; it took me too long to put it out, but I know what to say now.

This book and I have been on a strange journey together. I’m a writer, and back when I first read it, I was going through a season of growth and I had reached the stage of confusing style and formula. Over the past two years, I have slowly discovered so much to love about this story. In a way, it’s like I was following along with Bastiaan in learning to look at the heart instead of what I thought it should give me.

Myrthe was hard for me to relate to at first. She didn’t act like a seventeen-year-old (and of course I knew all about that because I was seventeen myself at the time). I didn’t realize back then that that was the result of her trauma and her grandmother’s manipulation. This last time reading it, I came to appreciate her complexity so much more. It’s still hard for me to get into the first-person POV, but I acknowledge that’s a stylistic choice.

Plus, her whole thing is she isn’t allowed to feel emotions. Emotions are what we use to connect to the characters, so she felt too passive. She spent more time reacting to others' actions than taking actions of her own. But later in the book, she starts coming out of her shell and is much easier to like.

Something I still don’t like (though it isn’t as bad as I previously thought and this is more of a stylistic choice again) is her romance isn't romantic. Nor is it a beautiful friendship blossoming into love. She just picks a guy, decides to love him, and then silences all the warning bells in her head so that she won't know he isn't loveable. It's weird. Yes, love is a choice. I personally prefer when a character doesn't make the choice to start loving a person, but when they realize that they do love them, they make the choice to keep loving them. I've noticed this in the *Out Of Time* trilogy too. The choice to love someone is often a choice we don't realize we’ve made until it happens, but Nadine's characters make the choice very verbally, even if only in their head. Fawkes handled the romance pretty well, though!

Plus, she can make wishes come true just by crying and everyone can find a thousand reasons to use a wish, so that adds a cool element to the story.

Bastiaan grounds the story and adds a wonderful balance to it just like Runt does for him. He adds a level of sanity to the confusion of rebellions and self-glorifying power-seekers and tries to calculate his moves, even if he’s stuck with the wrong equations. His Talent has become a crutch that he relies on too heavily, but I love how he started out just trying to help his mom and ended up saving the kingdom, even though he went about it the wrong way.

I love the way Runt has to ground Bastiaan whenever he comes home, how he and the mothers are the epitome of everything good in the world, but he still has a streak of human weakness that he doesn’t mind letting show, how he wants to be like Bastiaan but doesn’t know how and still keeps trying anyway. Runt’s personality is anything but. He grew up before his time, but he still has the heart of a ten-year-old.

And who wouldn’t want a friend, cousin, mother, coworker or queen like Anouk? She deserves so much better, but no one else could handle everything she did with such grace.

Sven, Oma, Hetti, and Mattias were all very well done and (mostly) believable. Until one remembers history, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be so ruthless as Hetti. She and Coralythe provided a dynamic to the story that is hard to find in fiction. Most stories antagonists are either a flat line of evil or a roller coaster of redemption arc that takes away from their character. They were a nice (and terrifying) change of pace.

I could go on about the worldbuilding, the themes, the wonder of the Well, the satisfying conclusion, etcetera, but this is getting long enough as it is. At the end of the day, I don’t think I’d mind if she ever wrote a sequel. As to what you will think of it, I guess it all comes down to whether you can really understand the characters and what they’ve had to go through or not.

This book has reached the tier of comfort-read for me, and I already look forward to the next time I read it!