House of Beating Wings (The Kingdom of Crows Book 1)

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I did not think any book by Olivia could knock out Celestial for the top spot, but we may just have a new winner. When Tim comes in at the epilogue, it made me wish they'd read it in duet, but I'm not taking anything away from Olivia's narration, I just believe they'd complement each other really well. And that ending paragraph made me very excited to dive into the second book, I want to see how his relationship with Fallon and his comeback as king take place.

It’s hinted throughout that her heritage isn’t what it seems and when it seemed to have become clear we then get another arc thrown into the mix which just took my head a little getting around. Although Fallon undergoes a lot of growth throughout this book, she kind of annoyed me at the beginning (and middle) with her obsession with the prince (not a spoiler- it’s literally mentioned in the synopsis).Until an oracle predicted my regal future, I’d never imagined myself rising above the curve of my round ears. Due to being born without pointed ears, and therefore not full fae, she and her Mum are cast out of high fae society. Fallon's Grandmother was so angry about it she left her husband and took her daughter and Fallon to live at the edges of their interconnected island cities, in poverty.

The romantic side plot is moving at a glacier's pace and I don't even know if I like the guy because he's barely in the story up to this point. Right off the bat, I immediately recognized the difference between the writing style in this book and in the author’s other works (the last book I read by her being Starlight). I personally love it when characters curse and speak freely and plainly in my books —they just seem more relatable to me once they curse lmao— which is probably why this worked so well for me. I also read several other smaller authors and have enjoyed them but have not been as invested in the story as I was this story.

While I grew to love aspects of our FMC, Fallon, her obsession with the cringy Dante throughout the book even after she set out on her adventure with Mórrgaht was getting under my skin. For I am invested in this world, and am anxiously awaiting House of Pounding Hearts to hit as an audiobook, and really hope these narrators are back as well! The one thing I disliked about the heroine that left a bad taste in my mouth was how she went out of her way to s*ut shame and profession shame (the other woman was a sex worker) another woman because she was jealous. But what really was the nail in the coffin was our FMC poking the CLOACA of a bird statue and not being able to tell if the crow checking out her naked body was a man because it didn’t have any genitalia. The writing is bad, the pace is bad, the characters are bad, the story had so much potential but was ruined by all the mentioned things.