Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken

Genre: Young adult, fantasy
FTC Disclosure: library
Published: 2010
Pages: 354
Content: Mild violence.

I was expecting a lot more from this one...

Sydelle lives on the outskirts of her kingdom which is all but forgotten by her king...until the wizard North shows up to change everything. Her kingdom is going to war with another one and she and North must make it to negotiations with important information.

But North wants her for a reason...she's really great at weaving and can even patch up his wizarding cloaks without breaking their magic. Weird things seem to happen whenever she is sad or angry...another wizard is following her and North. North himself is moody and is holding secrets.

This all sounds great and it could've been. It really fell flat for me. Some of the scenes were confusing. I didn't know where people were and what actually was happening until after the fact. I also didn't get their attraction. After North is unconscious a friend of his tells her that she should love him since he hasn't had a lot of it in his life...so she does! Oh, poor North, even though he's a big jerk and treats me like I'm 2 and yet calls me Darling for no apparent reasons, I guess I'll like him, no love him. Yeah, I didn't buy it.

Also, the world of Brightly Woven wasn't described very well. It makes me wonder if she's planning more books in the future. But the world and its magic and the characters in it just didn't have any meat.

I'm being generous with the 3 stars since the story was different and I do enjoy fantasy and there wasn't a love triangle...so bonus.

I wish she had decided on an adult fantasy so she could have fleshed out the characters and turned it into a trilogy with details and character development, then it could've been something.

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Image Source: Goodreads

German cover:

I really like the U.S. cover the best. The German one doesn't have the fantasy feel to it that goes along with the story. Which one do you like best?