Blog Tour: The Shadow Girl by Misty Mount

Well, friends, welcome to my first review for a blog tour.  Fear not!  This won’t change my normal format because I believe in the good with the bad.  Not that there’s much bad in this book.  It’s a really fun read.

Zylia is a middle child in a large family.  She’s stuffed between siblings that are rowdier, prettier, more popular, more organized, and everything she’s not.  She’s resigned to living a life in the shadows, away from attention, when she realizes that it’s become extreme.  She’s not just not being noticed, but she’s actually disappearing.  In order to save herself, she has to figure what’s going on, and fast, or she’ll be lost forever.

So there were a couple of things I would’ve loved to be a little different…

• The climax where Zylia has solved her mystery and is working through it seems so brief.  To be honest, I’m not sure how this could/should be stretched out.  In fact, that may have made the pacing weird.  I think I just loved when we got there so much I was hoping to marinate in it a little longer.
• The lead up to the climax may have been a smidge stretched.  I love Zylia’s anxiety (I know this is a weird thing, I’ll get to more of it in a minute), but I feel like we definitely got a snapshot of it and maybe could have used just the slightest bit less back story moving into the climax and resolution.

And some things I just plain loved…

• Zylia is so consistently anxious.  The writing to keep her in this place was great.  Not that she doesn’t grow as a person, but making sure she acted “like herself” throughout was an impressive accomplishment.  We frequently have heroines that are brave and fight battles with no fear and aren’t afraid of confrontation.  And I love those heroines… but to be honest… they’re not like me.  I’m way more like Zylia.  Which is why I loved her regular retreat into her thoughts.  Her over analyzing felt incredibly realistic and so very relatable.
• I spent way too much time thinking about Zylia and her plight when I wasn’t reading the book.  Is she just so anxious she thinks she’s disappearing?  Is she actually disappearing?  My brain went in circles trying to figure it out.  Even with the ending, I’d say I’m not sure.  Not that the story is unresolved.  It is.  But in a delicious way that, I think, still allows for your own interpretation.  Love this.
• Zylia’s parents are around.  It’s pretty common to pick up a fantasy read and the parents are dead or markedly not present.  Zylia has a full family.  She’s not on an epic journey to avenge a death.  The story is delightfully planted in reality with a touch of fantasy/whimsy for good measure.  It’s a fresh take on a character’s journey in this genre.

The brief version of my thoughts on this book?  You should most definitely give it a go.

Want even more about Misty Mount?  Check out my interview with her!