Title: The Crown’s Game (The Crown’s Game #1)
Author: Evelyn Skye
Rating: ★★

“For the winner of the game, there would be unimaginable power. For the defeated, desolate oblivion. The Crown’s Game was not one to lose.”

There’s no other way to say it: this book was a disappointment. Magic? Fantasy Russia? Battle to the death? Romance? It seemed like it had everything going for it. Even when I read an excerpt back in the spring, I thought it was going to be such a big hit! I had expected so much more than what I read, however. My biggest issue was the plot. It was so boring. I was hoping for big, epic battles full of magic and pages after pages of action and tension. There was none of that. It wasn’t until about the last ten percent of the book that it started to pick and become more exciting.

I was not a fan of the writing either. It was a bit juvenile at some parts and there was also too much telling and not enough showing. Another thing that bothered me was how similar it was to The Night Circus. The plot and characters were almost identical, just with a different setting. It was almost like reading a Young Adult version of the original, which meant I could guess exactly what was going to happen later on in the book. Overall, it was a light and quick read, but not at all what I was expecting when I had read the synopsis.