Review: A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

Summary

One hundred years after falling asleep, Princess Aurora wakes up to the kiss of a handsome prince and a broken kingdom that has been dreaming of her return. All the books say that she should be living happily ever after. But as Aurora understands all too well, the truth is nothing like the fairy tale.

Her family is long dead. Her “true love” is a kind stranger. And her whole life has been planned out by political foes while she slept.

As Aurora struggles to make sense of her new world, she begins to fear that the curse has left its mark on her, a fiery and dangerous thing that might be as wicked as the witch who once ensnared her. With her wedding day drawing near, Aurora must make the ultimate decision on how to save her kingdom: marry the prince or run.

My thoughts

I don’t know what to think about A Wicked Thing. I’m so very torn about this one. Foremost I wonder if I would have liked it more had I known that it is the start of a series. I went into this book thinking it is a standalone only to find out at the very end that there is more to come. While I was reading it, the book seemed to promise so many amazing things set in this world, but couldn’t deliver them because they were kept for sequels, which can become somewhat frustrating when you think you will never get to read about them at all.

This is not the only thing that caused my mixed feelings. The thing with YA novels is that there is always this strong female character who seems to be able to take on the whole world. When I started reading A Wicked Things and realized that X is not like that I was excited because it was so refreshing to read about a character who handles all these problems more like I myself would do. After what happened to her she is weak, confused and lets herself get pushed around which is totally understandable in her situation. The problem: it just doesn’t make for an exciting story. After some time I wanted her to do SOMETHING so bad, for her to take the initiative and not let others be the boss of her.

That’s not it though, there is even more. What I liked a lot was the whole idea of Sleeping Beauty and what happens once she wakes up. This is such a great idea and I loved reading about it. I also liked that there wasn’t some insta love between X and the prince who wakes her up. Here again the problem though: she runs into some other guys instead and falls for him right away.

Overall there was too much romance and not enough magic system for my taste. I get that a lot of guys are interested in her because of who she is but it was just too much for me to enjoy it. I didn’t even like one of the guys more than the others. I just didn’t care and wanted for her to get out of there and do her own thing, alone.
I made me really sad that there wasn’t more we get to know about the world and its magic. There are a few hints about different things that were really promising but I’m not sure if I want to take the chance and read the second book, hoping they will finally be more prominent.

A Wicked Thing comes with a promising concept and a world that seems to have great potential, but it just wasn’t for me and lacked that certain something to fully grab me.