Well, this was terrible. I hated everything but the cover. 
 I'm proud of myself for finishing this The Queen of the Tearling even though it's turned out to be one of my most disappointing reads this year. HarperCollins was really pushing this title marking-wise, and while it's not considered YA, they did offer it to quite a few YA bloggers for consideration for review. I had to be the special person to request it. I wish I hadn't have done that. 
 The Queen of the Tearling tried to do a lot of things and that's its biggest problem. You can't have a high fantasy, historic society set in the future and NOT do any type of world building. You can't have set rules up in your world only to break it because MAGIC. It's not nice to tease the reader from the very beginning of SECRETS and have you supporting cast dangle it in from of us like a carrot for the entirety of the novel and NEVER TELL US by the end. Because that's exactly what happened. It really made me question what the point of the novel was considering I learned nothing new about the plot or characters by the end. 
 I'm also surprised this was marketed as Adult to YA readers when it really is just a poorly plotted MG fantasy. For all this book had going for it -- and it had a lot, including a movie deal with Emma Watson attached to star! -- I expected so much more. I expected to be blown away, and maybe that was part of the problem, but really the level of SUCK contained in The Queen of the Tearling is baffling. I don't recommend it at all.