Flame & Crystal Thorns by Kay L. Moody ~ Hidden Hollow Book Tours and The Girl Who Reads
Thank you Hidden Hollow Book Tours for the chance to read and review Flame & Crystal Thorns by Kay L. Moody.
Flame & Crystal Thorns by Kay L. Moody is the first book in the Fae & Crystal Thorn series, which is set in the same universe as The Fae of Bitter Thorn universe. It comes out on the 10th of May, and is a very sweet clean fantasy read!
Giveaway!
Grand Prize: (1 winner)
- Signed Hardcover of Flame & Crystal Thorns + swag (US Only)
- Unsigned Hardcover of Flame & Crystal Thorns from Book Depository + signed bookplate + swag (International Only)
- The givaway is on instagram, so to enter you’ll need to click right here!
I also have to thank Hidden Hollow Books for sending me this beautiful bookmark by @artzzofkae and the art print by @artbyartemis! I was genuinely so surprised when I got this in the mail because I genuinely didn’t think that places would ever bother sending an art print and a bookmark to Pakistan.
Back to Flame & Crystal Thorns!
Blurb
As a human girl, Chloe is perfectly happy being back in the mortal realm where she belongs. She’s even become the town apothecary. When a fae from her past shows up begging her to return to Faerie, she utterly refuses.
But then she finds out an angry group of mortals are using iron to hold an entire castle full of fae hostage. And of course, the hostages include Chloe’s older sister and her sister’s beloved.
Reluctantly, Chloe packs a bag for what is supposed to be a short trip to Faerie.
But the mortals are more powerful than she expected. To fuel them, they have weapons, flames, and revenge. They won’t stop until they control every court in Faerie.
With the help of a new and mysterious magic and a devastatingly handsome fae companion, Chloe has to save Faerie before her sister and the other fae are killed.
Book review:
Flame & Crystal Thorns was a very easy read that I finished in one sitting. It’s a regular sized book at 350 pages though, so don’t think that was because it was a small one!
It’s very fast-paced and builds up an existing world. I haven’t read the first series, so I don’t know if it went over the same details as it did in that, but to me, it didn’t feel like information had been crammed in, which is always good!
What stood out for me were Chloe’s fears. The very human, very real ones, that a lot of women still face in society. She’s worried about her livelihood and being replaced by a man, no matter how good she is. She’s worried that all she can do is give, and no one does something for her. She’s worried about being too strange to be wanted. She’s been trained to be polite (which gets her into trouble). She’s so afraid of not being marriageable after her injury at the end, and that’s such a real fear for so many women; statistically proven that your husband will leave you if you get really sick, and in brown families how would you get a girl married in the first place?
Chloe also faces some pretty hard choices at the start of the book (trying not to spoil it), which I feel could have been brought up in the rest of the book more often. With the hospital crisis that happened at the start of covid, I’m sure a lot of readers will ache when they read that.
That being said, Quintus slowly grew on me, but I couldn’t figure out what had happened between them that caused them to fall apart in the first place. I’m also very glad, that he basically told her that he didn’t need someone to be his mother, but a partner, that giving wasn’t all that she was good for!
The Girl Who Reads 
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