This vaguely reminded me of Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn, which is actually a favorite of mine, except without any of the action, tension, romance, character development, or interesting worldbuilding. Yeesh, that sounds bad, but I don't know, this book just seemed so unfinished. I was able to read it in just a couple of hours due to the double spacing but despite the speed of my actual reading, the story itself felt sluggish and never seemed to reach a noteworthy climax. 
 The good: I mention Summers at Castle Auburn because both protagonists are forgotten royalty, sent to live in the countryside with an older relative, and leading kind of a mundane existence (growing flowers here, training as an apothecary) before getting roped back into the politics of the kingdom. Summers at Castle Auburn also had a dreamy feeling and slow pacing, so I didn't object to that, specifically. I did like the first half of the book and the backstory of Marni's mother was great, so I found myself anticipating something big happening, but that was the whole problem: nothing ever really happened. 
 The meh: The writing is clearly meant to conjure up a fairy tale atmosphere, but I was just never able to immerse myself in the world or care very much about the protagonist. There are only a few characters and none of them seem to be fully developed - again, I suppose the author is trying to rely on fairy tale standards and our expectations, but I found all of the characters to be either of one note (the terrible king, the sympathetic queen, the beloved grandpa) or kind of pointless. Which brings me to... 
 The bad: What was the whole deal with the Lord of Ontrei anyway? I suppose his marriage offers (NOT a spoiler, given that it happens with his first appearance) are supposed to show that even marriage/love wasn't a choice for her, but was he supposed to be a genuine love interest? a villain? a protector/rejected knight in shining armor? I have no idea and I suppose, by the end, that I also just didn't care. Just like Marni didn't and the author apparently didn't, because we didn't even get any sort of conclusion for him. 
 As for the woods...I'll admit, the concept was fascinating and appropriately mysterious/threatening at first, but I was so sick of it by the end. 
 The ultimate disappointment: The dragon. Again, what was the point? If anything, I felt like the story was interesting BEFORE that point. I thought her vengeance would turn on the dragon or something but it turned out to just be all very forgettable. I actually grew to dislike Marni as she seemed to act more and more immaturely, whether it was sulking about everyone blaming her or having her totally pointless and stupid on again/off again thing with Ontrei. 
 I think the amount of actual plot and material would have made this a lot more appropriate as a longer short story or at most, a novella. Stretching this into a novel just meant that the reader was taken through all these superfluous scenes with the Lord of Ontrei and the courtiers and whatnot which really meant nothing in the end. I'm not a strict adherent to the "every scene must have a meaning/advance the story" philosophy since I do love my lazy, descriptive scenes and time-wasting pretty language, but seriously, this was too much. Half the book could have been cut with little change to the overall story...probably because toward the end, there just wasn't much story. 
 It was just so BORING in the end and no, I didn't feel closure, I felt like all the tension of the inciting incident disappeared because of a trick, which further reinforced my feeling that the entire book was pointless. I think I've used the word "pointless" at least five times so far but that's what I felt in a nutshell. 
 Disclaimer: I'm an English major and an adult, among other things. I appreciate the lyrical, the poignant, the introspective, and so on. I've seen a few comments from people claiming that others found this book boring because they're too young to appreciate good prose or introspective characters - this strikes me as pretty condescending and also just untrue.