After hiding her magic for seventeen years, Princess Jennesara is all that stands between the Plateau kingdoms she loves and the power-hungry mages bent on destroying them. Shielded is an adventurous YA fantasy for fans of The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Hunted, and The Demon King.
As second born to Hálendi’s royal family, Princess Jennesara was never supposed to inherit magic. She is supposed to wed the prince of Turia to strengthen the alliance between their kingdoms. While traveling to Turia, she feels the magical tethers connecting her to her family snap one by one—a sign of her family’s death. At the same moment, a mage bent on revenge blasts through her traveling party, killing everyone in his path to get to her. Knowing she has to survive for her kingdom’s sake, Jennesara flees into the Wild, chased by hunger, wolves, and shadowmen.
She’s barely alive when she stumbles out of the Wild and into Turia, but vows to find a way to protect others from the mage’s destruction. She befriends the prince she was supposed to wed and works her way into Turia’s palace. But with war threatening at every border and the murder of her family fresh in her mind, she can’t reveal her identity to anyone, including the prince. Not if Jennesara, with her forbidden magic, hopes to defeat the mage before he becomes unstoppable and destroys all the kingdoms on the Plateau.
My Review
Fairyloot/Book Box readalongs in general are so great, they motivate me to read the book and get it off my tbr so that’s always a huge plus, and this is just one of the few I’ve participated in this year!
I will be honest, straight up, the first few chapters did not interest me very much and I thought this was going to be a DNF!
I still do not understand how she wasn’t able to cover up, smear with some sort of dye or color or even chop the strands of hair that would have given Jennesara away since we were led into this story with her hair and how it shows her secret, that she has magic. This is the main reason it took me so long to just get over it and be invested.
This Chris she seems to like, there was something about him I wasn’t sure about, I’m curious as to how others felt about him when they read this. So, if you’ve read this, I’d love to know your thoughts about the book but especially Chris..and this hair debacle that I’m still not over.
I do not lie when I say I was so salty about this and how it made no sense to me, but suddenly, the story got so much better once it got moving.
The key to getting this story interesting to me seemed to be getting us away from the castle and into this very spooky and ‘trippy’ forest. It was insane and so unnerving, I loved those moments so much and really enjoyed the descriptions of the forest and Jennesara’s journey through it. How she made it out, I believe my guess is as good as hers but we get to an even more interesting part!
Jennesara’s entered the kingdom where the orders to kill her family were possibly issued, how will she deal with this King? And how will she return home?? So many questions I had and luckily Kalynn Flanders answers them, she also gives us readers the gift that is Prince Enzo.
It is in all my hopes that Jennesara and Enzo can be together, they certainly have an interesting relationship, given who he is and specifically who he is to her and the problems that arise due to the tragedies she’s faced. I definitely loved that Jennesara kept her identity a secret, a very smart move on her part and it mad for a much more interesting story.
Seriously, the chemistry though between Jennesara and Enzo is at like 110% and I am there for it.
The ending presented some great trails to lead into book two and it was so good compared to the beginning. I wasn’t always happy with character interactions they could seem shallow or too easily done but I think that Flanders will lean and grow into those characters next book and I can’t wait for it!
3.5 Cups of Coffee from me, a good and satisfying read!!
The Caffeinated Reader 