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A Crown of Ivy and Glass by Claire Legrand
Summary
The Middlemist is a place of mystery and danger. Its magic is enticing. Our main character is Lady Gemma Ashbourne. Her family was blessed to receive magic from the dying gods—everyone in her family except for her. Gemma suffers from chronic pain. When she is in the presence of magic, it causes her pain. Her whole body aches with it. In a world that thrives in magic, this leads Lady Gemma to a life of misery. She does not complain, though. Instead, she strives to please the family. However, under that happy demeanor, Gemma is extremely depressed. Trigger warning: there is a lot of self-harm in this book.
One day her father invites a young man to stay with them while they work on a business affair. This one man isn’t everything he seems to be. Lady Gemma’s father asks that Gemma show Talan the lands and be kind to him. He accepts and becomes very friendly very quickly. Cause for concern? We shall see. Talan has come from a family who thrived on making everyone miserable. It brought them joy. His entire house and family were murdered, and Talan escaped. But now, he wants to be accepted into society. He pleads to Gemma to help him, and in return, he will help her defeat Gemma’s family’s arch nemesis, the Basks.
In their journey to do so, Talan decides to ask Gemma to find and defeat the demon, who he believes is at fault for all the chaos that has taken place. This has been blurbed as “Bridgerton meets A Court of Thorns and Roses.”
I have always loved Claire Legrand. Her Furyborn trilogy is one of my favorites. I’ve read it twice. Legrand has a talent for creating characters who seem very, very real. She throws real emotions into them. Not one character is perfect, and that is what readers want to see in writing. They want to see the main character have real problems and struggle to achieve their desires. Legrand has expressed her struggles with depression and her issues of feeling like she’s an actual writer. You can see her struggles and her pain written into her stories.
I was intrigued when I saw that A Crown of Ivy and Glass was described as Bridgerton meets A Court of Thorns and Roses. I enjoyed Bridgerton and have a solid addiction for A Court of Thorns and Roses. It is extremely popular. Did the book follow through with the advertisement? Well, sort of. The first half was very Bridgerton; there were balls, and the mansions were described with incredible riches. The clothes they wore made me envious. Everyone was prim and proper with class distinctions. Legrand wrote a beautiful world and lush scenery and landscapes. I especially enjoyed reading about Gemma’s sisters, Mara and Farrin; I think I might have liked them a little more than Gemma. Gemma wanted to please her family, but she felt like, behind the scenes, she was someone no one wanted around. The pain from the presence of magic was so bad she would become sick, inconveniencing her father and making it difficult for outings. She was someone seen with too much emotion because of it.
Legrand walked us through her world of beauty and class and threw us into the adventure. Then, suddenly, the balls were taken away; there were no more beautiful mansions, and clothes were torn and ragged from escaping monsters and enemies.
I spent some time reading reviews from other people. Most of these reviews didn’t think Claire captured the story as she should have, that it was extremely choppy from start to finish. The transition from Bridgerton to ACOTAR was just not done pleasingly. To that, I say boo hoo. How else are you supposed to do an extreme transition? These characters lived a life of luxury, but the presence of a demon and the threat of danger in the Middlemist caused turmoil. When one ventures out from the comfort of one’s own home, there will be challenges and different scenery, especially in a forest.
I liked the author's flow in this book. It is the first book in another trilogy, and I will be continuing it.
Please pick this up because you’ll enjoy it. Yes, there are negative reviews out there on this, but I think that they are a little too overzealous. Claire Legrand did an excellent job in creating this world, and I’m excited to see what she does next.
Find it here: A Crown of Ivy and Glass
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