The Crowns Game by Evelyn Skye

"Are you afraid of her?" Pasha asked.

More than you'll ever know, Nikolai thought.

If you had seen me at the bookstore on Wednesday, as I sat waiting for my dad to come get me, you may have wondered "Why is that small little human sitting on the floor crying?"

Ha.

Here is the answer:

Warning: There is much talk of Food in this review

This book is released on May 17th, 2016

Genre:  Fantasy

Feelings: For me, yes. I mean I almost cried in a bookstore. What can I say, I'm a sucker for friendships. 

Cuteness: -quietly sings- I will go down with this sh iii i ipppp

Fast pacing: Steady pace throughout

Series: Yep

Read if you like: The Grisha Trilogy, or just Russia in general. MAGIC. It's basically what happens if you cross Shadow and Bone, The Hunger Games, and The Red Queen, and a little smidge of Throne of Glass.

Content: A bit of action, a bit of violence, but clean pretty much throughout. 

Trigger warning? Loss of parents. 

In summary...She thought she was the only enchanter. He thought he was the only enchanter. The governments known all along, and unfortunately....-dundunduuunnn- THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!!!

Thoughts: Wooden boxes and leaves. Painted buildings. A knife,
Messages: Friendships and differences. 

Rating: 4/5 

Geez. This book. I read it in one day, on buses and before and after work, eager to finish the whole thing. It started out kind of typical YA fashion, but then went on to blow minds. All of them. All of the minds just blown to oblivious. 

-The Characters-

Here is a lesson on How To Get Into Mariesa's Heart:

Friendships. Especially good old fashion bromances
More friendships.
Just good relationships. 
Bro's 

I really like those. And so, as you might guess, my favorite parts of this book were the parts with Pasha and Nikolai. The parts with Sergei and Galina, the Self Proclaimed Siblings of Much Spite™ 

Granted there were some other weird love interests thrown in that made no sense but we'll push those aside. A+ characters.

Vika can be shelved with most of the other fantasy main characters. With Mare and Sharzhad and Amani. That being said. I still really liked her. She's not my favorite, not a character I think I'd gush about, but she was a likable little wasabi chip. 

Nikolai, however. N i k o l a i.

Confession: I may have loved him from page one because he's got the same name as one of my Absolute Favorite Characters in YA history, Nikolai Lanstov. BUT. He went on to be his own little golden nugget of melted pepper jack cheese. A sweetheart. But with a KICK. It's funny because after reading his physical descriptions it's like wow you must be super broody but then he's like flowers and strawberries. If you know what I mean.

Pasha. The little...jelly bean. Of adorableness and and AHHH I can't spoil anything but he's precious and we love him. 

Evelyn has this way of building the relationships layer by layer, that just made sense. And there was never any "oh but mAybE i Do LOVe Him" between the main romance. Vika and Nikolai were intrigued by each other, but they never fawned or gushed any more than was realistic. So when the "time" came for realizing there may be actual feelings, it went exactly as it should for these two. Out of the blue.

All the characters were just well shaped little loaves of bread and I adore them all. 

In case you were wondering, I am writing this instead of eating my breakfast. Hence the food. 

-Plot and Writing-

This was a very well structured book. The way things were arranged worked really well. There were a few minuscule things that bugged me. This book kind of did that thing where it needs to have EVERYONES point of view, but one character will only get like o n e chapter. That always has bugged me because it's seems too easy.

Tiny thing, though. 

Other then that I do really love the way this story is told. The writing's good. I think this is the biggest area for growth. While good in some areas, some of the dialogue and action felt a bit flat. BUT, Evelyn definitely has a knack for descriptions. I could see everything so clearly, which I think is what made this setting so strong.

Goodness, did she do her research. Everything made sense. Having story set in another country is hard. And this was done phenomenally. 

I honestly still can't get over descriptions. Everything was so lovely. It was like when you have a bunch of little viles of food coloring and macaron batter. So you drop a few drops in, a few different colors, then they SWIRL together and create this vibrant shade never before seen to the macaron world.

Now I really want macarons. 

Messages and Other-

I love relationships. I love friendships. I love betrayals and mistakes made and anger and discovery. I love seeing them grow. I love seeing the little loaves of bread slowly rise by the power of yeast and science, slowly grow until they're something different. A little malformed, but stronger.

It's hard to take a world that we don't live in and make you relate, but this book did that, and I appreciate that. And here I am, insanely excited to see where this series grows. 

Growth is so important. That's what I loved so much about the Grisha Trilogy. For all of its flaws, that trilogy showed growth. In Alina, the way she transformed.

And I'm so excited to see that for Vika. 


Overall, this was a solid book. It had some flaws, some writing things that irked me, but I truly think this was a solid debut. The story was sound, and I'm excited to see this series and Skye's writing grow.