
Aditi Nichani
I’ve been reading this book for WEEKS now and despite finishing it yesterday, I honestly don’t know what I read. I was promised a glittering fantasy novel set against the backdrop of the French Revolution and a poor girl fighting against the aristocracy with the help of forbidden magic. Instead I got a 400+ page trove on gambling addiction, cheating while gambling through magic and a cast of characters that were honestly not well developed at all. In A Nutshell: This book could have been so much more, but it failed on all counts. MY (MORE ELABORATE) THOUGHTS: 1. I AM DISAPPOINTED. I honestly thought this book would be a brilliant fantasy novel, especially after I fell in love with Roshani Chokshi’s The Gilded Wolves, set a century later in Paris but I found the characters in Enchantee irritating, the purpose of the novel lost by the half-mark and the plot flimsy at best. The main character’s logic as she threw herself into situations was so half-baked that I was actually SHAKING THE BOOK as I read it as a substitute to shaking her. 2. What started off as two sisters trying to make it out of poverty by using petty magic turned into a note on gambling addiction, a conspiracy that was kind of petty and not sinister because the plot of it was just so flimsy (AND THE READER DIDN’T EVEN REALLY LEARN ABOUT IT UNTIL THE LAST CHAPTER) and magic that was said to have consequences… but didn’t at the end of it all. 3. I also felt like this book didn’t fully use the potential of being in the French Revolution. I was expecting something more with Camille and Sophie – the sisters and two main characters in the book – specifically, becoming a part of the revolution as paupers with magic who see the aristocracy for what they really are but from having nothing at all, in the next chapter they magically HAD ENOUGH MONEY TO MOVE INTO A MUCH FANCIER NEIGHBOURHOOD, PAY THREE MONTHS RENT AND IT. WAS. JUST. SO. IRRITATING. Where did economics and logic go out of the window? 4. Let’s not forget that hot air ballooning and fundraising suddenly became a part of the novel?? I honestly did not understand it at all. 5. All in all, I wished this book was just… better.
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