Most of the time, the YA novel fails to live up to its gorgeous cover and interesting teaser. To my eternal surprise, this was the one YA novel where I read the cover blurb and almost passed on the spot, yet the actual writing and plot were ten times better than what was described. As for the cover itself, it's nice but it hardly stands out from endless ranks of beautiful YA covers these days. 
 The Orphan Queen was surprising in so many ways, I could list them and already have a full page. Let's start out with my instant dismay just one chapter in, as the author proceeded to infodump the history of magic through two characters reciting what they learned...talk about a stilted scene! I was pretty sure the rest of the book would be like that, but it turned out more than okay. I thought I would be getting a cheesy, cliche, orphan-queen-turned-spy-turned-vigilante book with half-developed characters (optimistically speaking), a heroine with magical superpowers, and something vaguely resembling a plot beneath a lot of instant attraction and truuuue love. In other words, I expected your average YA novel from a non-famous author, where marketing matters as much as actual quality. Do I sound really harsh about the YA genre right now? Don't get me wrong, there are some amazing authors writing YA and novels/series that I will forever love and cherish, but the fact is that I read copious amounts of terrible writing too. It's to the point that I sometimes default into speed reading mode - even when the book is downright awful, I usually feel some kind of masochistic need to finish it. 
 So this novel is actually exactly what it advertises, in terms of the orphan-queen-turned-spy-turned-vigilante part, and yet Ms. Meadows actually pulled it all off without anything becoming ridiculous. You know you have a skilled author when she can pull off a cliche plot - several cliched plots together, really - and still end up with a compelling story and rounded characters. 
 Fans of Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass series will probably like The Orphan Queen a lot. There are some definite similarities: the heroine is the lost princess of a conquered kingdom, ends up masquerading as a lady in the conquering kingdom's court, needs to figure out how to use her forbidden/banned magic to stop magical evil, falls in love with either the prince or prince's best friend/personal guard/Captain of the Guard, and needs to find the courage to take her rightful place as the ruler of her kingdom. Also, add in some flashbacks to oh, ten or so years ago when her parents were brutally murdered in front of her while the conquering kingdom was visiting, and some early meetings between the prince and the princess. In fact, aren't both princesses 8 when they become orphans and 17-18 when they start their path back to the throne? Okay, okay, so a LOT of overall plot similarities, but in all fairness, Maas was hardly the first one to come up with that kind of plotline. 
 So what made The Orphan Queen much more than your average novel? First of all, I finished the book with a strong sense of what each main character was like; they actually had personalities, rather than adjectives thrown around 2D assigned roles. Wil was a bit too adept at everything she did and she did come off as too perfect sometimes, but she does end up making some mistakes and I could actually empathize with her confusion and the pressure she was under to live up to her responsibilities, even when she wasn't sure what they were. Second of all, the romance was surprisingly kept to a minimum, and it WORKED WELL like that, because it emphasized that even though these characters are young, they are already burdened with a lot of responsibility, tragic histories, and are mature for their age as a result. Sure, not mature to the point that they don't get jealous or develop feelings for each other, but mature enough to actually put their duties and the needs of their people ahead of hurt feelings. Not to mention, this is pretty important in fantasy settings, since they tend toward the medieval and adulthood was achieved at a much younger age than what we now expect. (When in doubt, just remember that Daenerys Targaryen is all of 13 when she's married off to Khal Drogo, Arya is 9, and Jon Snow is 14 in the books.) 
 This thing about maturity is an incredibly important point I'm making here, because the one thing I can't stand about poorly done YA novels is how whiny and selfish the supposed princesses/princes/etc. are, even when growing up in the middle of ostensibly huge events like a war, or having been groomed from a young age to become a ruler. (Side note: But what do you mean I can't marry for LOVE? Let me just run off and possibly start a war because the prince is old and ugly (ahem, The Kiss of Deception) but wait, I'm going to fall in love with the prince once he comes and finds me because it turns out, he's young and handsome! And don't even get me started on Cayla Kluver's Legacy.) 
 The point is, almost all good YA needs to be a bildungsroman, especially if you're trying to do anything set outside of a high school or which involves killing or kingdom conquering, which is expected in fantasy. The characters can and should start out with a certain degree of immaturity or naivety, but the plot of a series really shouldn't revolve around it. I would actually argue that almost all main characters should always still be developing and changing, whether in YA or adult fiction or whatever genre. 
 What else? The novel was paced well in both action and nonaction scenes, which is truly refreshing to read when so many novels lack good editing and plod along with endless descriptions of food, clothing, and thoughts. While there were some plot holes, I think they're the kind of plot holes necessary to vigilante stories of all types: you just have to suspend your disbelief over how unrecognizable people magically become when they decide to be someone else. For example, Wil easily changes herself from a duchess into a young guard, somehow, by just pinning up her braids or something like that. And yes, I know a mask obscures the face and you can change the pitch of your voice, but you'd think you can recognize someone by their eyes, too, especially when you're always making eye contact and/or scrutinizing them. 
 What this author didn't do so well: Everything pretty much was easy for Wil, to the point that it just wasn't believable. This relates to what I was writing above on how everyone just accepted her as a duchess and then overnight accepted her as some kind of young super kickass heroic guard. A lot of things happened "just so" for everything to fall into place. This would normally bother me a LOT more but I attribute this again to the vigilante/comic book superhero influence, the kind of thing where stuff just happens so everything works out easy as pie. If the second book is like this again, I definitely won't be able to give it five stars, but I have a feeling that Wilhelmina's path is going to get more difficult, as it really should.