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Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

The premise of this novel immediately caught my eye and I knew right away that I had to read this novel. A fantasy story for teens that is actually really dark???? Definitely up my alley!

Every queen of the island of Fennbirn gives birth to a set of triplets – three queens, all who have equal claim to the crown, with each being a possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to conjure up storms and use every element at her whim. Katharine is a poisoner who can ingest the deadliest poisons with no problem. Arsinoe is a naturalist and can control plants as well as animals. With their magical gifts, each sister will have to fight to be Queen. And in this fight, it isn’t simply about winning or losing…. it’s life or death. When the sisters turn 16, the battle begins. The last queen standing wears the crown.

So…. this novel was different for sure. I had expected this novel to be fast-paced and have a lot of dark points to it. However, this story was quite slow-paced and dealt with more emotional aspects. I was looking for a lot of action, but that didn’t really happen until close to the end. While I liked reading from the perspectives of each sister, not all of them were the stars of the show. For example, Jules overshadowed Arsinoe, and Katharine almost had no personality. Only Mirabella had something going for her, so she was the easiest one for me to connect with. There was one sister whose love angle I absolutely hated – but I’m not going to say who or why, since I don’t want to give anything away! I wish there had been more plotting and darkness in the story, because it all seemed a bit light to me. There were certain elements that could have been explained better, like how this triplet phenomenon came to be and why they have to fight and how each sister gets selected and taken away. The ending definitely caught my eye and while there was a twist thrown in there that I had suspected was the case all along, I know that I will definitely be waiting to read the next book in this series! I hope it will have a faster pace than this one!

Happy reading ~