The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter
This book was enjoyable enough, but not amazing. I liked
the Regency-plus-magic setting (as I pretty much always do!), but I
would have appreciated more knowledge of how this alternate version of
Britain came to be (and a little more political/geographical explanation
would also have been good). The main characters of Gray and Sophie were
cute together, but I didn't feel a whole lot of chemistry between them;
their relationship was an
it's-so-obvious-it's-staring-everyone-in-the-face-so-why-can't-you-see-it
kind of romance. Basically, you could see it a mile away and know it
was inevitably going to happen at some point. The plot consisted of a
LOT of conversations, and in my opinion, not enough action/suspense.
There was some intrigue, of course, but it wasn't really the sort the
reader can try to figure out, because we weren't given enough
information. Things do get more eventful right towards the end, but even
then, I thought the climactic scenes were a little confusing and didn't
provide the pay-off I wanted considering the less-than-eventful lead-up
to them.
In terms of characterization, Gray and Sophie were both a little too
good,
in a way, for my taste. They are both intelligent, loyal, well-liked,
and (generally) well-meaning individuals; perhaps it was just that they
weren't given enough weaknesses to make them feel more authentic. The
third-person tense may also have made it a little more difficult to
really get inside their heads and understand them as people.
I
also think the villains could have been more villainous (they didn't
seem that sinister, except perhaps by sheer number of them) and their
characters expanded upon. I had difficulty keeping them straight, there
were so many!
That said, it was a pleasant, comfortable, familiar
kind of read. The language used evoked an older era, and yet was
usually not particularly dense or archaic, making for fairly easy
reading.
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell 
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
