The Queen’s Wing

**We received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. We’d like to thank Jessica and Bookouture for the opportunity. This book came out on Nov 21st and you can get it here.**

What I drank prior:
It’s one of the rare nights where I think a bottle of wine is drinkable when Sam disagrees but the bottle still disappears…. Also I’m super watching cheesy Hallmark movies right now – totally worth it.

Spoiler-free Overview:

As a note, I received this book from Netgalley in return for a free and honest review.  I’ve already reviewed this on their website, but thought it would be worth letting all of y’all know too.  The Queen’s Wing follows Bel (full name, something along the lines of Belangria).  Her family are minor royals on her planet, the war planet in the Empire.  The bad guys, the super white obsiouly evil Gravians, let call them evilminions, attack and kill the entire ruling family making Bel and her family the rulers, meaning Bel inherits a political wedding to Con, the engineer-focused/religious leader of anothe rplanet.  One that focuses on making things.  She’s a bit of an outlier because she cares about being able to defend herself, and also dresses differently.  Then there are a few assasination attempts and then some other shit goes down.

Spoiler-free Thoughts:
I did really enjoy this book.  It had a number of tropes, but definitely played around with a number of them in fun ways.  There was a love triangle but it worked itself out, there was a bitchy person who easily could have been a rival but wasn’t, there were complicated relationships, and way more happened in this book than I expected.  I’m used to a lot of YA getting to a certain point only to set up a sequel.  Don’t get me wrong, this is very much a YA novel, but it doesn’t change the fact that I almost expected the book would end 1/3 earlier than it would to make people feel the need to buy a sequel.  Instead, the book could stand on it’s own, which makes me want to read a sequel that much more.

Characters:  It’s an interesting switch to have the lady in the book be military minded one while the dude character is all about creating things.  Bel is definitely a flawed character, she sometimes knows that she’s making the wrong decision even if its for all the right reasons.  And Con was a ton of fun.  I do wish a few of the other characters were more fleshed out.  Jondar, Thom, Renna, etc seem decently full, but Shae, one of the lines of  the love angle (it’s not a triangle unless the two dudes might also be interested in each other and this is a petty petty hill I am willing to die on) seemed a little flat for a friend since childhood.  You could see the growth in Bel’s character, but most of the other characters didn’t have the character growth I might have hoped for.  That being said, there was never a point in this book where I thought someone did something really out of character.

Plot: Oh, there was so much plot.  A minor genocide, followed by an assassination attempt, followed by yet another assassination attempt, a foiled wedding, an invasion and guerilla warfare.  And I haven’t even mentioned any major spoilers.  This book definitely didn’t hold back.  It reminded me of the show, The Good Place, because everything happens at least a few pages before you would expect it would happen.  Which meant that it was a fun read.

Writing Style: Not super my strong suit.  This book did have some wonderful descriptions but didnt’ seem to get lost in them the way some books do.  The descriptions of flying (a big part of Bel’s homeworld) were beautiful enoughto almost make me wish I cared about flying.  It made me really want to visualize the worlds that were contained in the book. 

Honestly I’m just really excited about the fact that I’ve managed not to mention one of the biggest spoilers for this novel.  All I’m gonna say is there is obviously meant to be a wider world taht I think will be introduced more in a second novel.  Let me ksee the aliens and shit.

What to pair it with: Mai Tai.  This honestly just came to me so now I’m going to try to explain it.  It’s a drink that’s a little bit layered while still being sweet and a little bit fruity and is generally a joy to drink.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

COMMENT DOWN BELOW: Hope you enjoyed the review.  I’d love to hear you opinion when you read this book!

Ginny