Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me access to this ARC!

DNF at 42%

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I thought the cover and the title were absolutely adorable, plus the premise of The Princess Bride meets Shrek? Color me intrigued.

Unfortunately, my issues with the book started right at the first chapter. The writing style/tone was not what I was expecting when I originally picked up this book. Based on how this was advertised and the summary, I thought this would be romance with a fantasy backdrop, but the tone reads more like fantasy with a romance backdrop. The language used is very fantasy (I.e. think dense, somewhat overly complex sentences) which wasn’t what I was looking for from this book.

I tried to push through, and once I got more used to the tone and writing style it wasn’t bad. But another problem became clear: this book was following The Princess Bride basically to a “T”. I understand it was referenced in the summary, but it just felt extremely unoriginal because you could essentially predict everything as it happened. Personally, when I’m reading a book that’s inspired by another classic tale, I want it re-written in a unique way, but this really didn’t have many details changed. Honestly, this book was also ripping off themes from Ella Enchanted. Again, it’s okay to pull inspiration from other classic tales, but almost none of this felt original to me.

Finally, the reason I DNF’d at 42% was that the pacing completely fell flat. The book started off right in the middle of the action, but then hit a stalemate a few chapters in and suddenly everything felt mundane and slice-of-life.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t get through the entire book, but I am confident I read enough that my review is still helpful.

TLDR: If you are looking for a slow paced, fantasy book with a romance sub plot with themes from other beloved books, you might enjoy this title. I did not.