The Drowned Woods: The Sunday Times bestselling and darkly gripping YA fantasy heist novel

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Characters have to deal with questions on what’s right and wrong and how to cope with knowing that you did something you regret throughout, but our main characters consistently choose to try and do what’s right for the majority rather than the few. It makes for a lot of tension and overall you really just won’t want to put this book down until everything is resolved. But when I had a moment in between deadlines I found myself returning to that note I’d scribbled. And I began to do what I always do: research. the pacing. i think that since the characters were so meh, all i had to lean on was the plot. towards the middle of the book i really did fight to keep reading as everything went slow and it became a time to rely on the readers’ love for the characters (spoiler: i didn’t love any of them). i truly couldn’t tell you a single notable thing that happened in the middle.

i>Thank you Little Brown and Netgalley for providing me an eARC of this book in return for an honest review. The novel has all the elements of a classic heist, including a band of experts who each have a specialized skill, a villain in a fortified stronghold and a seemingly impossible goal. Within this framework, however, Lloyd-Jones delves deeply into the psyches of each member of the crew to thoughtfully explore themes of morality and grief. Thank you to the publisher, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, for providing me with a copy to read and review. The Drowned Woods is such an unique gem of a book and if you decide to read it (which you should!), I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did.I'll admit, in the beginning, it was a bit hard to delve into this story. And I found it a bit difficult to even appreciate Mer as a character. But with every chapter, she grew on me. I loved watching her transform from a woman on the run, to a woman on a mission to pull off an impossible heist, to becoming a hero who chooses the lives of others over her own.

It is through these contradictory characters that the story begins to unveil itself. On the surface, The Drowned Woods seems like a thrilling YA fantasy adventure about a heist, but since the plot is very much character-driven, the author slowly and masterfully reveals an unexpected twist that I could have never predicted. There is a bit of romance thrown in, but it is never the focus and develops very, very slowly as our main characters grow and mature over the course of the events of the book. My heart swelled; insta-tears. It made me want to reread TBH knowing what I know now, even though I just read it! What a moment. It was so good.The story has a strong start but it drops in the middle and never really recovers from the steep fall despite the nice ending; this good beginning and good ending make the book feel like the two slices of bread are more delicious than the filling in the sandwich, and although the protagonist sounds intriguing at first (she has a film-worthy opening line in her first chapter) and you want to see what kind of magic she has, and how she'll use it, it progressively became harder and harder to care about the main lead, Mererid the water diviner, and Fane, her love interest, because they were rather underwhelming, a classical example of Fantasy characters that do as expected and have little to offer characterisation-wise. Characters: They w Mer's able to fly under the radar working as a barmaid. That is until the day her old handler, Renfrew, the Prince's ex-Spy Master, approaches her with an opportunity to bring the Prince down. Onto the story! The Drowned Woods is set in the Kingdoms of Wales, and our main character Mererid (‘Mer’) is the last living water diviner, able to manipulate water. She’s on the run from the Prince after previously being “his” water diviner, but one day her former father figure approaches her with an offer that would help her get revenge on the Prince.