The Stolen Heir

THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!!

Holly Black’s decision to write this from the POV of Suren was unexpected and exciting. I liked learning about her background and the depth of her character. As another reviewer said, this is not like The Cruel Prince, and I must admit I felt slight disappointment while reading this. It is still a captivating tale; however, it pales compared to its predecessor. Also, I felt as though Wren was overreacting once figuring out that Oak had kept that secret from her. She saw it as a betrayal, yet he never actually betrayed her. He even mentioned he had something important to tell her once the drama ended. After she became aware, she had a personality flip. It's interesting now that I think about it: she lived believing she was powerless, only to find she had an unimaginable amount of power within her. She was a lot like her Lady Nore in the end, which is a compelling parallel. Also, I’d like to add that the plot twist was quite predictable, unlike many of the twists in The Cruel Prince. However, I am excited about book two. I hope it's written from Oak’s POV. I want a better glimpse at his past and more Jude and Cardan content, of course 🤭

At first I thought okay this book is kind of mediocre and there’s way too much romance for my taste (nothing inappropriate just that the MC talks about another character every 5 seconds) and it felt more like a romance as the main plot then a subplot, and the other books in the series make it more of a subplot. I also was disappointed how it never goes back to Elfhame, as I had assumed at first that it was still in that location. On its own, it is a great book. Though, I honestly thought it was horrible at the beginning because, in addition to everything stated, problems were resolved or dealt with incredibly quickly. Also, everything felt very boring and didn’t rlly stop feeling like that until the ending (I assumed it would be more exciting at some point). Now, I realize many of my assumptions were WRONG. All this was to set the stage for the next book, so obviously it won’t be like the other ones. And the next book will go back to Elfhame, which I am extremely excited about. The plot twists were predictable except for the ending, where I was left GAGGED. I mean WOW. Holly Black, you’ve done it again. Beautiful tie to the title and left me scrolling to go to the next chapter (which was unfortunately nonexistent) saying “THAT’S IT?”. Even though the ending left me wanting for more, I will say I am disappointed by how similar Jude and Cardan are to Wren and Oak. The relationship dynamic and personalities have an uncanny resemblance. I am sure this was intended, though I assumed there would be a bit more variety in the main characters. While I believe it was a very good book, I did find many issues along the way. 4/5 stars though because I could never truly give a Holly Black novel 3 stars.

I really enjoyed this book, it kept me hooked from start to end. Something that I love about Holly Black’s Folk of the Air books is that they all contain such insane descriptions, events, and storylines that you forget you’re reading with the movie playing inside of your head. It also made me forget about their end goal since there were so many events happening in a small time span, that is something that I admire. Even though this books is incredible, it did get a bit dry at some parts since there was a lot of dialogue. I would have also liked to see more of Wren’s unfamily since they were mentioned a lot, but I would assume that they would make a larger appearance in the second book. I would have also liked to see more of Oak and Wren getting some good friendship developments, which ofc, we did get, but I expected more. Then again, it will most likely be in the second book. Overall I really enjoyed this book since it was vivid and involved tons of different adventures (I may have felt a lot of joy and deja vu when Jude, Cardan, and other OG characters from the Cruel Prince trilogy were mentioned;). A round of applause again for Holly Black :)