I won't say I hated this book. I did enjoy it, particularly at first. The concept isn't something I've seen before - it takes place in a village surrounded by a dangerous, possibly poisonous fog that no-one ever returns from. The villagers have no contact with the outside world and are kind of looking for a way to escape the fog but mostly just getting on with their lives, with no idea what lies within the fog or how it came to be there. I do like this premise, and I like the idea of creatures lying in the fog in wait, but I feel like the plot is weak and does no credit to the concept. Perhaps there could have been a better laid-out set of trials awaiting them in the fog, or at least a proper series of challenges to overcome to escape but the main characters just seem to get separated, get lost, stumble about a bit and then leave the fog and start to deal with the outside world. 
 The whole thing just seemed a bit of a let-down, they got the fog to come down after it had been surrounding the village for 80 years by asking nicely. It was just pretty uninterested. I was going to read the sequels as I have a free e-book of the whole series and there are some things that weren't explained in Hidden that I sort of wanted to know but I find I just don't care enough to read another 2 books. 
 The characters are perhaps the worst part of the book - I felt no attachment to any of them, I honestly just didn't care about them, I almost wanted them to die just to make it a bit more interesting. 
 The main character is a 19-year-old girl called Tressa who I feel was supposed to be one of these strong, independent young women who fight and have love triangles, etc. - bit of a Katniss Everdeen type - but she just seemed to have no passion, or emotions at all really. She was unconvincing and I didn't care about her. 
 Tressa's love interest is her childhood friend Bastian who's equally as dull and unconvincing as she is. His only motive or care in life seems to be following Tressa around and sleeping with her and even that doesn't seem to inspire any strong emotions in him. What annoyed me most was that his wife was conveniently evil and nasty so as to justify his cheating on her. Completely unnecessary, I think, and a sign of the writer's inability to imagine her own characters complexly - Bastian has to be good so Vinya has to be evil. I doubt it occurred to Megg Jensen to write her characters with both strengths and flaws - you know, make them believable? 
 The main enemy is Queen Stacia who's instantly branded as evil with no real motives other than evilness. Additionally, she's described as having lots of sharp objects in her hair that 1. seems pretty inconvenient and more likely to injure her than her enemies and 2. must be heavy. Does she have problems with hair loss as a result? 
 There were a few other characters that I felt had potential to be multi-faceted and inspire some emotion (positive or negative) - Leo, Udor, Adam, but they were badly written and disappointing. 
 I was interested in the premise and the setting and I'm generally very excited by anything that promises dragons but this was a solid 'not great' 2 stars. Oh well.