If sibling rivalry were an Olympic sport, Three Dark Crowns would take gold, poison the silver medalist, and set the podium on fire just for fun. This YA fantasy promises a brutal coming-of-age filled with queens, elemental magic, and a whole lot of familial murder. But does it deliver on that promise… or just make you wait for the sequel to do the heavy lifting?

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The Cover

First impressions speak to a dark, violent story that is also beautiful and fierce. Three very different crowns speak to three very different main characters; the treatment of the crowns hints at magic. The cover design for Three Dark Crowns is simple in a way that appears luxurious. The font choices underscore that aesthetic. The title is more hierarchically important than the author’s name, giving the impression that the book publisher believes the novel will sell better based on the title and graphics than on name recognition alone.

The praise at the top of the back cover gets too close to the top margin and looks like it was an afterthought. I appreciate the addition of the images of the covers of the other books in the series, giving the reader an idea of what kind of commitment the series is to read all the way through.

The spine is so clear and clean. It’s a lovely addition to a bookshelf. No notes.

Interior

The interior is nicely laid out, the text width is large enough to fit a good amount of content per page, and the margins are wide enough to read the entire paperback without breaking the spine. Highly legible fonts with nods to the cover in each chapter’s well-executed drop cap. The chapter titles indicate location. The chapter title treatment, adding a different icon to each location to further the reader’s understanding of place, was a delightful touch.

Not loving the execution of the first title plate with the pattern background. The gradient isn’t the same at the top and bottom of the words, and I am not 100% sure that it adds anything to the reading experience.

The map is nicely executed and really helps to set the tone for the book as well as help curious readers understand the sense of place.

I also enjoyed the rhyme referenced in the book as a stand-alone page after the title plate.

Did the design affect whether I bought the book?

No. Three Dark Crowns was given to me by another reader who had purchased it and DNFed.

There are a lot of characters in Three Dark Crowns. As with any fantasy story, it takes some time to figure out who everyone is, their relationships with each other, and why they are important. Quite a few characters don’t contribute to the plot, so I wonder if they become more important later in the series. The main cast is well described, and you get a sense of who they are. The triplets being fifteen, I found them to be fairly self-aware for that age group and also pretty in tune with the burden their position places on them. There is an interesting range of emotions, but none of them get overly dramatic about them, except for when Mirabella is angry, which manifests in her power. Overall, the characters are well drawn and their motivations are pretty clear.

The writing style is appropriate for a YA novel and keeps up a decent pace, not too fast, but it doesn’t lag either. There were a couple of passages where the sentence structure was confusing, but I figured it out with context clues. The style was consistent throughout. The third-person telling leaves us a little outside of the emotional turmoil that the characters must be experiencing, but given how traumatic the subject matter is, and the age range it is meant for, this is a good thing.

This book is rife with “found family” themes, both in terms of the triplets being separated and fostered by other families, and in the friendships that they form with their respective communities. There are some interesting parent-child dynamics that are explored in each of the households. There is a lot of manipulation and abuse; it is, in fact, “dark.”

The twist at the end was foreshadowed very early. I wrote a note on page 29 about the plot twist revealed in the last sentence of the book. That aside, the premise of the story is interesting and begs the question “why?” at every turn. Of course, that is probably the point: a person should not just follow along because they are told to, because that’s how it has always been done. We don’t get that lesson in Three Dark Crowns, but I imagine that is where the story will eventually end.

Books like this are a pet peeve of mine. The second-to-last sentence in the teaser on the back of the book is: “The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.” Which leads a reader to believe that this is where the plot will more or less begin. No. The entire book leads up to the night of their sixteenth birthday and ends “with a twist.” The whole first book is backstory, and there is no resolution to the story arc, making it incomplete, and you have to read the second book to know what is promised in the first. An author should not have to rely on writing one “story” and then breaking it into multiple books…make the characters and world interesting enough that they have multiple stories. And publishers…be honest about what you are selling people — a prequel to the story.

There are many references to different plants, specifically poison plants, but also other plants and trees. It makes me feel like I don’t know enough about what is what in nature to be able to accurately imagine what those things might look like. I mostly glaze over it, but if I were trying to form a real mental picture, I would have to look stuff up.

I’m torn. I will likely read the next book in the Three Dark Crowns series, because I am a sucker who feels like they need to read the story I was promised in the teaser, not just the prequel. However, if the next book ends on a cliffhanger with an incomplete telling of the original plot, I will not continue. The writing is good and the themes and character development are compelling. It is dark,k and more sensitive readers should be warned. (My oldest bought this book and could not finish it, which is how it came into my possession).

There is a lot of abuse of one form or another, and readers should tread carefully if they are sensitive to this kind of subject matter.

If you are an adult who reads YA, what do you love about it?

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May your life be as full as your bookshelf and as long as your TBR list.

Happy Reading!