Three Dark Crowns | Backlist Review

Hi friends! I’m here with a review for a book I read a WHILE ago: namely, Three Dark Crowns. I wrote this review right after finising the book…and I’m so sorry for the cringey mess you;re about to suffer through.

One Sentence Synopsis

Three sisters try to kill each other to compete to be queen. 

I would first and foremost like to say that I do not mean to hurt the author in any way, these are just my thoughts and opinions and she did a fantastic job because she WROTE AN ACTUAL BOOK AND GOT IT PUBLISHED that’s an incredible feat and I am not in any way undermining that.

Hahahaha…I’ve never really written a ranty review before so we’ll see how this goes. Usually, I enjoy most popular books unless I have a personal issue with it but recently I’ve decided I should go back and write reviews for books I’ve disliked so let’s start with this one!

Characters

Who shall I start with? How about the lovely Queen Katherine? After hearing KATHERINE and seeing KATHERINE everywhere I assumed I’d be the same. And I was right. Only, I was yelling it in a ROCKY ROAD I HATE THIS CHARACTER type of way(I’m gonna curse in ice cream flavors if that’s okay?) and I can genuinely say the same for her love interest(who’s name I can’t remember-yes he had that much page time.)
Katherine and Prairie? Pierre? Pietyr? were some of the driest people in this book. With hardly any time for character development, Piertyr was manipulative as vanilla bean heck. Katherine was just about as interesting as a double scoop of-what’s that you say?- PISTACHIO ICE CREAM. YES I’M BRINGING OUT THE PISTACHIO(no offense to all you fans out there) but WOW WAS SHE BORING. AND GULLIBLE. I HAD NO FEELINGS TOWARDS HER AT ALL EXCEPT POSSIBLE WANTING HER DEAD TO JUST GET HER AND HER BORING STORY AND BORING CHARACTER ARC OUT OF THE WAY.

Well…let’s do Mirabella next. I actually liked her, she felt real to me unlike most of the others. Her powers were cliche, sure, but her motivations really intrigued me and I did enjoy her chapters.

Arsinoe was my other favorite, she also felt real. I honestly connected with her the most, not because we’re in any way similar but because I got to see so much of what drives her and hurts her and motivates her.

NOW FOR EVERYONE ELSE!! (I’m gonna try to do them in one sentence each, so y’all don’t have to read paragraphs of crap.)

BILLY was actually pretty nice, sadly he was also flat, underdeveloped, and pretty much just filler.

JULES I didn’t really like cuz she felt so unneeded to me, and so “perfect.” Ugh, give me a peanut butter crunch break.
*rolls eyes

JOSEPH was horrible, stupid, and an incredibly unlikable character.

Plot

Well obviously I was disappointed because literally NOTHING HAPPENS that was promised in the synopsis but I’m not going into that because I’ve heard it improves in the next book.
My other problem with the plot is actually how useless it feels while reading it. I know it’s meant to be character-focused and the author did a great job at that but I didn’t really care about the characters by the end. I SERIOUSLY DON’T LIKE KATHERINE DON’T HATE ME BUT UGHHHH.

Romance:
So this kinda melts into the plot thing but you know what I honestly hated the most in this book? I can look past slow plots and (arguably) badly developed characters and not my favorite writing style but…the…
insta love.
*cue gasps of horror

I know what you’re thinking: Wait if this is supposed to be a four book series, and this is basically just character based, then WHY THE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP IS THERE INSTA-LOVE??? My answer: I don’t even know. I don’t want to spoil anything but for those who have read the book, there is a scene where two characters meet and guess what they do that very same night? Uh huh. Yup. And one of them claims to love someone else, like um what? You literally just met this person an hour ago and now you’re doing this?

Katherine’s relationship was practically the same thing. I couldn’t connect with the characters cuz they weren’t there so obviously I ain’t seeing any kinda sparks flying in a relationship. It was quick, it was speedy, it was nothing but a plot device for the twist at the end and it was a twist I genuinely didn’t care about. Yay, insta-love! Really, there was only two relationships I could see forming. Arsinoe and Jules’s friendship was beautiful, and Billy’s and Arsinoe’s was wonderfully developed. Again, as much as I liked Billy, he was just plain two-dimensional.

Summary

I really, really didn’t like this book. It could be entertaining when it wanted to be, but was otherwise boring. Tell me your thoughts on the book!! Catcha ya soon, au revoir!