Shielded

This is the latest book I have received through my FairyLoot subscription - a monthly YA book box. YA stories always have a fairly easy reading style and this one is no exception. It provides a great light and easy reading break from more meaty books. Shielded follows the story of a princess who has a magic birthright in a land where magic is viewed with suspicion after evil magicians in the past fought wars which devastated the land. She is a descendant of the mage who defeated these evil ones. At the opening of the book she is betrothed, somewhat against her wishes, to the prince of the neighbouring country to gain support and aid for a war going on against the remnants of the evil mages. On her way to her betrothal her party is attacked and she is left to believe that all her family have been killed. Vowing vengeance she then proceeds to try and find the mage responsible.

This ticks a lot of modern tropes of YA. There is nothing especially original about the story being told here. The writing is easy to read and fun, but the plot is extremely predictable. I have been reading more YA recently than I have in a while, and this was particularly heavy on the YA tropes. The better YA books have subverted some of the tropes in interesting ways - this one was all to predictable. It also has one of the tropes of YA fantasy that annoys me the most - the false curse. If you are going to have your characters cursing, do it properly or at least tie it in with the mythos you have set up in someway. I get that YA is meant to avoid swearing, but replacing swear words with random words is not actually not swearing. And it is deeply jarring to me as a reader.

Overall I don't regret reading it - it was fun and provided a welcome break from the heavier material that is my more usual reading matter. I just wished it would break its self imposed boundaries a bit more and be a little bit less predictable as the writing was fun to read.

4 stars! Full review here: https://bookswithnoel.blogspot.com/2020/03/shielded-by-kaylynn-flanders-surprise.html

An enjoyable fantasy read? Yes.

Great for both YA and Middle-Grade readers!

Main character-wise, I liked Jenna and found her pretty interesting. I wished there was a bit more in-depth with her though and more we could've seen to her.
The characters were fun and engaging, though I noticed that it was more the side characters in the last half of the novel that were the ones I liked a lot.

  It was an enjoyable read that had even more backstory and plot hinted at in the end, so I feel like it was just setting up for the next book in the series. Which also means there's more to discover which makes me pretty happy as I want to see more of some side characters and hopefully some depth to Jenna that I can love as well.

 The world-building and satisfying ending were probably my favorite parts of the book! Despite not loving somethings as much as I would've liked, there were parts that made up for it.