ARC Review: Stolen Enchantress

Hello world! How are you? I have a ton of overdue reviews, because in the last month I was a good book blogger and read some ARCs but I was also a bad, bad book blogger because I didn’t write the reviews. Ok, I am not feeling really bad right now, because real life happens and I wasn’t lazy, I was just so busy that it was impossible to find the time for blogging, so ok, I’m not feeling guilty, but now I have a lot of work to do… it’s time to get busy and get the things done!

Thanks to the author. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Stolen Enchantress
Author: Amber Argyle
Series: Forbidden Forest #1
Publication date: Aprile 9th, 2018
Any girl who goes into the Forbidden Forest never comes out again. Except the one who did.

Larkin should have been watching her little sister, should have paid more attention to the trees looming over her family’s fields. Now Sela is gone. Knowing full well the danger of the forest and its beast, Larkin goes after her anyway. With her sister clutched in her arms, she manages to escape, but not before discovering the truth lurking beneath the wicked boughs.

She may have evaded the beast once, but with the full force of his magic now fixated on her, she isn’t sure how much longer she can resist. 

The cover is a piece of art, and the blurb for once says the truth: this book is a sort of The Pied Piper meets The Beauty and the Beast for real and the author shows an imagination rich and wonderful. I love the cover and I think that it’s the right one for this story.

And what a story! This is a highly enjoyable reading, even if I wasn’t so enamored, because it was too much angsty for my tastes. I prefer something with less angst all around, and in this one the author is not really kind to her characters, so I don’t know if I would read the next one in the series. But… but it was a great reading nonetheless!
The writing is good, and the author did a really good job while telling us her story. It’s all so imaginative, and fairy-tailesque (is this even a word?) and good. We see her world and we see what she wants us to see.
And then we have the characters. They’re all quite good (even if there was a thing with Bane that didn’t sit very well with me, but I can’t say more because it would be spoiler!) and they all are not just wallpaper, they are real! Larkin is not a bad MC, even if I didn’t love her. I wasn’t always so fond of her decisions and I had some problems putting myself in her shoes, so I didn’t love her, but I liked her, and I liked Denan. I think that he was my favorite character, but there are some others really good. I liked Alorica, too, and that was a surprise, a really big one, to be honest, because she’s the mean girl and usually I am not a fan, but hey… the author did a good job with her too! And we have a lot of interesting characters, Crazy Maisy (I haven’t decided to go on with the series, that’s true, but if I’ll go on I really hope to read more about her!), Talox and Tam, and also the Black Druids.
But my favorite thing of all was the Alamat. It’s a place so magical, so wonderful, that you have to fall in love with it!
And the story is full of twist and it’s enthralling. In some parts, I was really hooked up, even if in some other parts it reminded me a lot of ACOTAR. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s not a good thing, it’s just so.
Anyway… this book is a book about choices, about consequences, but also about family and relationship set in a wonderful world. On one hand, I was expecting something more, if I speak about how much I enjoyed it, because I am not a fan of angst and in this book there is a lot of it… really a lot! But, on the other hand, I wasn’t expecting something so good, because the storytelling is really good and the author creates a world so full, so vivid and magic that it’s like a spell.

This was my first Amber Argyle’s book but it won’t be the last, that’s for sure. I hope that not all of her books are so angsty, but I am really curious about them!

Did you read this book? Or are you planning to read it? Did you know the author and get some of her books to recommend me? Let me know!
Happy reading!
S.