Title: Truthwitch

Author: Susan Dennard

Publisher: Tor Teen

Genre: YA Fantasy

Release Date: January 5th, 2016

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

 

~ Goodreads Synopsis ~

Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home.

Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she’s a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden – lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult’s true powers are hidden even from herself.

In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls’ heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch.

~ ~ ~ ~

I wasn’t in the biggest reading mood whilst reading this, I must confess. I have been really excited to get into it, but when the time came, I just wasn’t feeling it. I was just in such a mood to take pictures and film videos and work on my blog design that reading kind of took a back seat, but I finally started getting really into it when I was in the last like 50 pages. Then I was really disappointed that I hadn’t been really into it the majority of the book.

The one thing that really stuck with me, though, is how great the female friendships were. There were no men that got between Iseult and Safi, there was no kind of competition, they just were true best friends. It was so nice to read that I didn’t realize how badly I wanted a book like that.

The entire book, actually, was run by females pretty much. There were a couple main male characters, but most of them were female and I was all for it. They were also super relatable. They were all very brave and powerful, but they also had real emotions and thoughts that made them feel human.

The plot was also interesting. Honestly, I couldn’t give a good summary myself because a lot went right over my head since I wasn’t in the right mood.

The forms of witchery were also interesting because they were very different. Magic stemmed from different elements, and it all very spiritual.

However, I found the book quite slow. There were action bits here and there, but none that really caught my attention until the end. I almost DNFed the book in the middle, but I pushed on because it had been so long since I did a review to be honest.

I feel like it was also a bit predictable and followed the same lines as most YA fantasy books besides there being relatively no boy drama. No matter how predictable it was though, it was pretty fun.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to someone who doesn’t read a lot because it might turn you off a bit to reading, but if you are barreling through books, I would suggest this one because it is purely a fun, feminist book that is more on the lighter side.

Let me know what you thought of Truthwitch and if you have read the rest of the series! Are the other books better?

Thanks for reading,

Taylor