#BookReview Gathering Frost by Kaitlyn Davis #YA #TuesdayBookBlog #Dystopian

Title: Gathering Frost

Author: Kaitlyn Davis

Rating: 4 Star

My Review:

Gathering Frost was a pleasant distraction from real life, exactly what I was searching for in a young adult fantasy book.

Following an earthquake, New York City merges with a fairy tale realm when a castle and its magic splinters through into the real world. Queen Deidre casts a spell over the land, feeding off the inhabitants emotions while keeping them subdued and, in effect, turning them into moving statues.

Jade was a young girl at the time and was mesmerised by the sight of a queen, she gave no thought to handing herself over to the magic and leaving her mother behind. Some years later, Jade is fully trained and the only female guard on the castle wall. Her heart, however, is a block of ice. When she encounters the ‘rebels,’ the people not touched by the queen’s magic, she is conflicted in her thoughts by a young man who saves her life.

Prince Asher is not under his mother’s spell, and he tries to unlock Jade’s heart from the tight grip of the queen’s magic. Their relationship is nicely developed, and Jade keeps up her cool exterior throughout the majority of the book. It seems odd to be drawn to such a cold character. However, the author has kept Jade true to the spell. As her time spent with Asher increases we begin to see the young girl beneath the harsh shell.

Asher is quite typical of a YA hero, he is warm, loyal, and loveable and the reader can’t help but be drawn to him. There are only a few secondary characters in this novel, but they each hold a piece of the story. Queen Deidre plays a complex role and although she is an evil queen we do see a softer side of her at the end of the book.

Gathering Frost has everything you would want in a YA fantasy; magic, romance, and action. Some of the fight scenes are incredibly well written. The ending is nicely rounded off but leaves a relevant thread to the sequel without disrupting the flow.

As a re-telling of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, this book was well crafted and a joy to read.

BUY a copy from Amazon UK or Amazon US

Blurb:

Will the prince’s kiss be enough to revive her frozen heart? Don’t miss GATHERING FROST, a dystopian romance from bestselling author Kaitlyn Davis that reimagines the classic fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty.

“I wish I could say I was the hero of the story. A resister. A rebel. Someone who lived to bring an end to the queen who stole my childhood–my mother, my life, my very world. But I’m not. I’m not the good guy. I’m the one who puts the good guys in their graves.”

Jade was only a little girl when the earthquake struck. Before her eyes, half of New York City disappeared, replaced by a village that seemed torn out of a storybook. Horses and carriages. Cobblestone streets. A towering castle. And, above all, a queen with the magical ability to strip emotions away. Ten years later and Jade has forgotten what it is to feel, to care…even to love.

Working as a member of the queen’s guard, she spends most of her time on the city wall staring at the crumbling skyscrapers of old New York. But everything changes when the queen’s runaway son, Prince Asher, returns. Under his relentless taunts, her blood begins to boil. Under his piercing gaze, her heart begins to flutter. And the more her icy soul begins to thaw, the more Jade comes to question everything she’s ever known–and, more importantly, whose side she’s really on.

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