Thorn

Thorn by Intisar Khanani

Goodreads Summary:
A princess with two futures. A destiny all her own

Between her cruel family and the contempt she faces at court, Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life. But when she’s betrothed to the powerful prince Kestrin, Alyrra embarks on a journey to his land with little hope for a better future.

When a mysterious and terrifying sorceress robs Alyrra of both her identity and her role as princess, Alyrra seizes the opportunity to start a new life for herself as a goose girl.

But Alyrra soon finds that Kestrin is not what she expected. The more Alyrra learns of this new kingdom, the pain and suffering its people endure, as well as the danger facing Kestrin from the sorceress herself, the more she knows she can’t remain the goose girl forever.

With the fate of the kingdom at stake, Alyrra is caught between two worlds and ultimately must decide who she is, and what she stands for.

My Review:
This is a typical fantasy book, and at times I even felt like I had read it before. Certain aspects of the book are similar to other books that I have read before, but I think that’s why I like it. I’m not a huge fantasy reader, but I know the types of fantasy books that I will enjoy. And I did really enjoy this one. For being slightly longer than the average length of books that I read, I flew through this one really quickly. It wasn’t necessarily that the storyline was super fast paced, but I was extremely invested in the characters and wanted to know what would happen next.

There were parts of the book that were so sad my heart broke for the characters, but there’s also an underlying aspect of hope woven throughout the storyline that I kept hanging on to. Hope that they would realize what had happened to her, and hope that the prince would be saved.
While I really loved everything about this book, I felt like it ended too abruptly. I would have liked an epilogue or something to type up the story nicely, maybe with some more of the romance that I wanted to see from these characters.

4 stars
I received this book for free in return for an honest review.