Book Review | A Breath of Frost | Alyxandra Harvey

Title: A Breath of Frost
Author: Alyxandra Harvey (web | twitter)
Series: The Lovegrove Legacy #1
Genre: Historical Fiction YA, Paranormal YA, witches
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Publisher: Walker Childrens
Release date: January 7, 2014
Source: ARC from the publisher via NetGalley (Thanks, Walker Childrens!)

In 1814, three cousins—Gretchen, Emma, and Penelope—discover their family lineage of witchcraft when a binding spell is broken, allowing their individual magical powers to manifest. Now, beyond the manicured gardens and ballrooms of Regency London, an alluring underworld available only to those with power is revealed to the cousins. By claiming their power, the three cousins have accidentally opened the gates to the underworld. 

Now ghouls, hellhounds—and most terrifying of all, the spirits of dark witches known as the Greymalkin Sisters—are hunting and killing young debutante witches for their powers. And, somehow, Emma is connected to the murders…because she keeps finding the bodies. 

Can the cousins seal the gates before another witch is killed…or even worse, before their new gifts are stripped away?

I have to tell you, friends, that there is VERY little about A BREATH OF FROST that didn’t intrigue me and hit a bunch of my “AMY you must read this” buttons: historical fiction from Regency England, witches, prophecies, murders, and a family of cousins with magical powers. I mean. Alyxandra Harvey could hardly have written a more ME sounding book. It’s a fair bummer then that A BREATH OF FROST didn’t quite work for me on every level, especially because I was looking forward to it so much and had such high hopes for it. Alas.

It’s hard for me to summarize A BREATH OF FROST because SO MANY THINGS happen. Basically, in this alternate/secret England, witches and warlocks exist. There are good ones–witches–and bad ones–warlocks–and there’s a witchy police force that keeps them all in check. Emma, Gretchen, and Penelope’s powers have been kept locked away by a very powerful binding curse that is accidentally broken the same night Emma finds the first body at a party, which is also the night that the Greymalkin Sisters make their big comeback from the witchy beyond. The girls eventually find themselves sent away to a boarding school for witches, where of course there is a mean girl and her clique and bodies keep piling up, and Emma is fighting her attraction to Cormac, a young man who works for the Order (the witchy police). There’s family drama with Emma and a showdown with the Greymalkin Sisters as the girls grow into their different powers. And, of course, a murderer is revealed.

So there’s this odd thing that happens with A BREATH OF FROST, and it is basically the root of all my issues. The book is nearly 500 pages long, and that is both a blessing and a curse, but in a way that might be hard for me to explain. There’s so much going on in this book that if it had been any shorter, it would’ve been a really big mess. But for a book that’s almost 500 pages long, it still felt kind of haphazard to me because there’s so many things to keep track of and things bounce back and forth and it seemed CROWDED with THINGS. And yet! There were parts of A BREATH OF FROST when I thought it dragged and was a little bloated and could’ve been edited better. Like the slow parts were in the wrong places or something. It was very difficult to get a handle on the pace and to juggle all the plotlines, which is a shame because as I mentioned before, this book had so much going for it and so much that I am predisposed to enjoy the crap out of.

There were things I liked about A BREATH OF FROST, for sure. The girls themselves were great personalities and perfect foils for each other. It’s clear that the focus of this book is Emma, and I liked her. She’s smart and determined and eager to get to the bottom of things. She takes risks and makes sacrifices. Her mother, who is basically mentally broken and living on a country estate, plays a major part in her storyline and I enjoyed it. Some of my personal favorite parts in A BREATH OF FROST were the flashbacks we saw of Emma’s mother.

And don’t worry your little hearts: I’m not going to forget about Cormac. He’s suuuuper broody and conflicted about his feelings for Emma, which are palpable and steamy. They have that “I love you, except when I hate you” thing going on. There’s so much happening in A BREATH OF FROST that the romance often took a backseat to THINGS, but when Emma and Cormac were together, it was full of tension. GOOD TIMES.

I have to say that the murder aspect was also pretty good. I didn’t guess the guilty party until right before the reveal, and the way it fit in with the bigger villains was a good little mystery/tie-in. I’d say that the biggest issue I had with the mystery–and with all of the plotlines in general–is that it all felt so cluttered, and so I thought everything suffered a little bit, including the parts I liked.

I can’t say for sure if I’ll be chomping at the bit to read the rest of this series, although I liked the characters very much and I’m curious about where some things are going from here. The world-building was a touch confusing, but that was probably just me and my winter brain being too cold and slow. I’m still so fascinated by the time period and historical fiction witches are SERIOUSLY one of my FAVORITE things to read about, so it’s very possible that A BREATH OF FROST won’t be the last book I read in this trilogy. But I can’t say it got off to the greatest start for me either. ALAS.

Check out some other reviews of A Breath of Frost by Alyxandra Harvey!

Tabitha @ My Shelf Confessions: “I seriously enjoyed the starter of this new series and look forward to reading more about these cousins.”

Meredith @ Pandora’s Books: “Overall, I did really enjoy this book. The plot was really interesting and right up my alley. The characters were all really awesome – even the ones I wasn’t as crazy about. But the fact that the writing was so confusing really threw me off. “