Wildflower is a cozy fantasy story of an Ella Enchanted-esque spell that binds the main character to always telling the truth. There is mischief amok, and the FMC must muddle through it all. This story was a standard cozy fantasy with more summer vibes.

Our FMC was unfortunately not very interesting to me. She acted like she was 14-16 years old and was so irritatingly naive. The villain was beyond apparent from the beginning, and the FMC's willingness to provide dangerous materials (rare flowers) to an anonymous source baffled me. The acceptance of her friends being horrible also depressed me. I didn't really want her to have a romantic relationship with the MMC; what she really needed was at least one good friend! I didn't really feel strongly about any character by the end of the book, and wish we got more of the cat characters.

I was moving quickly through this book and was interested in how the story was playing out until the halfway mark when the momentum crumbles. It was a real slog for me to get through the story past this point, and I felt myself disengage more and more as the storyline unraveled. There were compelling teases in the worldbuilding and political system and landscape, but the author shifted to a very predictable and not particularly effectual ending. The writing was also very uneven. So much of the story was the author telling us exactly what a character was thinking, feeling, and experiencing rather than demonstrating and showing through the writing.

I did appreciate that this was a queernormative world with positive representation. If you are interested in a lighter YA cozy fantasy story, you might be interested in this book. There are pieces of this book that could make a much more interesting story, and I hope the author is able to develop their craft more in future releases.

Thank you, Del Rey, Random House Worlds, Inklore, for the arc!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review! Rating: 3/5

Pros: • First of all, I did genuinely enjoy the first half of this book. The concept hooked me immediately, as did the main character. While not a perfect character, she was interesting enough and I had fun reading her interactions with Willoh. They were sweet and it was also nice to see a trans love interest.

Cons: • However, I enjoyed Fliss and Will more as friends than as love interests. I think the narrative rushed into their romance too fast so their declarations of love came off as dramatic and cringy. This book could've been longer to give them more time to bond, and also I wish it'd toned down the love declarations. • The writing style was flowery and repetitive, and not in a good way. I think using flower-related metaphors for this book was a good idea, but the amount of metaphors was distracting. The writing was also repetitive. Often the author would state how a character felt, and then repeat it by using a metaphor. A great deal of this could have been cut down. • Adding to this, it felt as if the author could not trust the reader to interpret the character's motivations or intentions. Somehow, the main character knew exactly what each character was feeling and why (and considering this was first person POV, this was jarring). And even stating obvious emotions was annoying, because yeah, we can see that this character is feeling this way because of how they're acting. We know their backstory, so we know why they're reacting like that. This was mildly annoying at first, but as the book went on, this telling of character emotions became excessive to the point that I almost put it down. This was the most frustrating area of this book. • In the same vein, some of the side characters as well as the villain weren't as fleshed out as I wished they would be, partly because of this telling rather than showing. I could see that the author had some interesting ideas surrounding the villain's motives, but we also didn't know enough about this character's backstory for it to be compelling.

Overall, this book had some good ideas, and I think the author has potential. I would not be adverse to reading more by this author.

Ok. I was not expecting to love this book this much! Its so sweet! You got the found family, budding romance, and reconciliation! Plus magic! Its such a sweet story, I bought the second book before I even finished this one!