I have mixed feelings about this read and feel a little bit uncomfortable reviewing it.

On the good side it was an easy read, quite a page-turner – and I easily get bored with books I don’t really really like.
I loved the beginning, the way the author expose the heroine, living with her malediction, a horrible thing, like a fairy tale turned wrong. A mixed between the tale about pearls and toads and Rapunzel. The writer never forget once that Amelia has to live with her « illness » and organise all her life around it. That part was awesome. I loved it.

Alas, the first part of the book was clearly my favourite. The second part was good to begin with, original and lively, then a bit rushed; the turn it took surprised me, not in a good way: I was hoping for something different, more subtile, less showy. Especially as, if the author took pain to work on the heroine behavior and feelings in such dramatic events, the whole was she recovered from it way to fast, she could never have been okay so quickly after such traumatising events. The manner she had, too, to deal with her abusive mother, was very appropriate and healthy, but she could never have achieve such a elevated state of mind without years of therapy. It’s a shame as the beginning of the book was precisely realistic and credible.
The very end was also to quick for my taste, and weird, as I was waiting for something else! Readers will understand what I mean 🙂

All in all a good read, but a heterogeneous text, which seemed to have been made by assembling various ideas and different parts, some worked in details, as the beginning, and some much less well-made, as the end and the choice to mix some themes (young adult and modern fairy tale was a hit for me, but the next part of the plot was over the top… overkill, even ^-^).

Still a lot of qualities, I’ll be happy to read another book wrote by the author!
3, 5 stars, rounded up to 4 for personality and reading enjoyment.

(I thank Netgalley and Midnight Tide Publishing for sending me the ARC in exchange for my honest review)