As you can see from my rating, first and foremost, I enjoyed this book. The overall picture, the overall feeling of this story ‘did it for me’. The author didn’t take any sharp turns that threw me off from the point of the story. This to me is IDEAL. It is so easy to go off track. As a writer, there are so many directions to add in and it’s tempting, but you must stay true to the story and Dyer did that well.

That being said, there is a little bit of buttoning up that has to be done to make this story perfect (and honestly, deserving of my 4 stars). First of all, in magical worlds we need world building. We, as the readers, need the rules of this world defined for us. I spent a good chunk of the book wondering if the Buck family was really magical at all or was this herbal ‘witch’ type things. I wish the author did a better job of explaining and building the walls for the world she put us in.

Secondly, the dialogue was on and off being realistic and awkward. Dialogue felt forced. Sometimes added to get a scene across but with no real reactions. For example, when Lee told/checked in with Meredith about a certain someone (being vague on purpose to avoid spoilers). Meredith’s reaction was nothing. I expected from her more questions or at least some inner thoughts. But after Lee mentioned it, we didn’t hear about it at all. Maybe the author just added that in to make sure the reader knew Lee wasn’t a bad mother? But really, adding Meredith to that part of the storyline was useless if you aren’t going to go anywhere with it.

I know I’m being picky with the above example, but this is one of a bit too many loose ends, not tied up dialogue and not true reactions to when characters would find information.

The balance needed here is to beef up the world building and remove some of the action. Although I enjoyed all the ‘action-packed’ scenes there is a lot going on and it could help removing some of them. All this book needs is to be tightened up. If that’s done, this would have been an excellent read. The author did a good job of walking the line, without crossing over it and I enjoyed reading this story.

_{** Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.}