LitPick Review
You enter a very descriptive fantasy world that is so similar to Harry Potter at Hogwarts…
Ivy Lovely, the main character in D.E. Night's The Crowns of Croswald, is a good-hearted person who is always trying to help others. She seemed content with living life as a maid taking care of the kitchen dragons, the scaldrons, but was soon whisked away by a carriage to a magical school. She doesn’t really believe in herself as she enters the school, but that will soon change. The more Ivy learns, the more self-confidence she gets, and she discovers her own magic that was there the whole time. She meets several friends and even a couple of enemies as she struggles to find her place in her new world.
It isn’t until her first encounter with the book’s main villain, The Dark Queen, that Ivy discovers just how powerful her magic really is. When she meets a new friend who tells her he worked with her family before they were killed, and that she was in fact royal, she realizes her life is going to change again.
Opinion:
The author writes about the characters really well and captures their descriptions so that they are easy to imagine. My favorite character was Rebecca because she has the power to turn into animals. She also seems very relatable because she is funny and clumsy. I loved how the author interjects her name throughout the story and creates a new character, Derwin Edgar Night.
I thought that I would have wanted more conflict with the Dark Queen other than just at the ball, but after reading the book I changed my mind and decided that it was a great introduction to the conflict that will be building between Ivy and the Dark Queen later in the storyline. I do wish there would have been a few more humorous scenes though just to help lighten up the storyline a little bit.
Overall, a great book and a great introduction to the series.
