Uprooted

***

3 Stars/5

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for giving me this book to review.

Agnieszka loves her home and village, even if the corrupted woods, full of a dark power and creatures, is on its border. The villages must rely on the cold wizard Dragon to protect them and keep the woods at bay, but it comes at a terrible price, every 10 years he takes he takes a young woman to serve him in his tower, and when they come back they are changed. With the next choosing fast approaching, everyone knows that he is going to pick Kasia, Agnieszka’s best friend and total opposite, as she is graceful, beautiful and brave. However, Dragon surprises everyone by choosing Agnieszka, and she discovers things she never knew about her kingdom, Dragon and herself.

I enjoyed Uprooted as it has an interesting story concept, full of magic and has a gothic and dark beauty and the beast feel to it. The main problem that I had with this book was I had heard a lot of amazing about it and I think my expectations were way too high. It had a good world but did have a slow pace, and it was too wordy and while the romance was a slow burn it did have a Stockholm feel to it.

Agnieszka is accident prone who has a knack of getting her cloths dirty, and is tough and tenacious, but is also very realistic and a normal person. I was a bit disappointed with Dragon as he was a human not an actual dragon, but he is a perfectionist and a loner and I did not like how he treated Agnieszka. Kasia was too perfect as she was beautiful, talented and kind but she was an interested character and wouldn’t have minded some scenes from her POV.

While I was a bit let down by this book as it didn’t live up to the hype, I did enjoy it. I would recommend Uprooted to fans of Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge.