Book Review: Frost

Title: Frost
Author: C.N. Crawford
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Fiction

Ava leaves work early as it is her birthday and picks up some Indian food that she and her human boyfriend like to celebrate. When she gets home, she hears moaning and finds her boyfriend, who she thought was her true love, in bed having sex with a blonde girl. He tells her that she should be happy for them because he found true love. She feels betrayed because she has paid for his mortgage while he was finishing school, and then he was going to help her get a bar in honor of her adoptive mom, Chloe.

Ava goes to a bar where she meets her best friend, Shalini, and while they are at it, King Torin of the Fae arrives. She does not bow in from to him like everyone else, which is generally expected of her. Instead, she rants at him that the trials to pick. queen are ridiculous and old fashioned. Torn leaves the bar and her rant goes viral after someone has recorded it. Torin returns to Faerie and his sister, Orla, reminds him of his curse–that he cannot fall in love or else he will kill the person he loves, the way that he did to the first woman that he had love. Torin realizes that while he has given out all 100 invites, including the six princesses who actually have a chance of winning, and the rest to the common fae who do not have a chance of winning but want to feel included–the one person that he knows for a fact he will not fall in love with is the girl from the bar.

The next day, Ava wakes up with a hangover at Shalini’s apartment, as her best friend had let her stay the night. Since she cannot fall back asleep, she tries to go out for a run, only to be accosted by the Camera Crew. Torin saves her and asks her to talk. He explains to her that he doesn’t want to get married by Faerie is dying and only a queen on the throne will help replenish the magic that the King takes from the realm to protect it. He proposes that they get married for a little while, Ava sits on the throne and channels the magic, and then they get divorced with no messy emotions. Ava asks if he can’t find someone to love because after she was kicked out from Faerie, everyone will think that she’s a gold digger. Torin offers to pay her 30 million dollars, and only after he agrees to give her 50 million dollars, does she agree to his plan. He asks her after her biological parents, but Ava has no idea who they are–she was found as a baby, and when she did try to go back to Faerie after severe bullying, she found out that she could not return.

Once they sign a contract–one that Torin is unable to break without risk of death, they are ready to leave when Shalini volunteers to come as an advisor to Ava. Ava tries to dissuade her by saying that it is a brutal world, but ultimately Shalini does join them. They drive their way in Torin’s car until they suddenly find themselves in Faerie, going through a portal on the highway, and the car becomes a coach with horses.

They arrive at the castle and meet Princess Moria at the gate, but Torin excuses them. He introduces Ava and Shalini to Aeron, who in turn takes them to Madam Sibba, the seamstress. Madam Sib creates a dress for both Ava and Shalini. Torin picks up Ava alone because Shalini’s dress hasn’t yet been completed, and takes her to the banquet going at a speed that forces her to run. She manages to keep up with him easily. At the banquet, he announces that the first challenge is a run. Aeron manages to sort out a room for them and Ava takes the servants quarters in the room, while Shalini takes the main room.

Torin visits them that night and asks that they speak in the morning about the run. The next morning he shows up with Running Gear for Ava, as per her request, and Torin takes her around the running course. He tells her where she might run into a problem, and they meet a spirit in the woods who tells them that Ava belongs in the wild. He also gives he three different bottles of magic that she can use. When they exit the forest, they come across the princesses who looked like they were trying to find out more about the first challenge.

The race starts and Ava stays in the middle of the pack, knowing that the princesses at the beginning would wear themselves out. The Princesses do wear out, but there is also horror during the run–someone has set up traps and some of the common fae had their feet cut off from their legs by a wire during the run. Ava figures out how to avoid it, but in the end, she has to use up two of her potions–one to remove her own ability to feel pain, and the other one, a gas that makes the princesses cough. Ava barely crosses the finish line in time. Torin heals her with his magic.

The next time he visits her in her room, he tells her to meet him at a cemetery–one that turns out to be full of pictures of human children. He explains that Fae used to kidnap human children out of fascination, and when the kids died, they buried them. And thus, Ava begins to train with Torin in fencing, something that she’s already familiar with having been a fencer in the human world. She’s easily able to keep up with him with swords, but once daggers are brought into the picture, it becomes challenging for her. Still, Ava and Torin continue to meet nightly to practice fencing as that will be the last trial. She begins to develop feelings for him, and notices that he appears to be checking her out–almost like their contempt for each other draws them towards each other even more. Torin also shows her all of the kingdoms visible from the castle–the redcaps, the dearg dues (who dragged humans to drink their blood) and the kelpies.

Torin sits in a room thinking of the image in the tapestry–King Finrawa holding the head of a demon, but that the tapestry never showed that when they had tried to make peace with the demons, the demons had cursed his entire family–Orla with blindness, his parents were sentenced to death, and he is condemned to murder any woman he loves. As part of his contract to televise this competition with the women, in order to make money for his Kingdom to buy food, Torin has to share a meal with the princesses and Ava. Throughout all of the dinners with the princesses he keeps thinking of Ava. When she finally has her opportunity to dine with him, she plays to her strengths and makes him a cocktail. He then asks her a personal question about the night, giving her the opportunity to redeem herself after her drunken outburst when they met. She tells him and the world the truth about that night–she came home to find her boyfriend cheating on her. This in turn causes people to find Andrew on social media, and threaten him. He ends up being fired from his job, which isn’t something that Ava wanted to happen.

That night is the first time Torin doesn’t show up for their nightly sparring, so Ava and Shalini sleep. Something wakes Ava and she comes into the main room, to see a silhouetted figure in the door frame coming up to Shalini with a dagger. She fogs up the room, by throwing the last vial that Torin gave her, and the attacker disappears from the room. Aeron checks in on them along with Torin, and they try to find the culprit once they hear Ava’s story, but the person has disappeared. The next day, Aeron and Torin give Ava and Shalini a tour of the castle, and Ava continues to feel like the castle is rejecting her, which is unsettling. Torin also takes Ava to the library while telling her a bit about his parents, and asking if she knows ballroom. She replies that she does know tango, and he tells her that he will work with that for the dance that they have that night.

While Torin fetches the records in hopes that they can find out more about Ava’s family, Ava gets a library card, and the ability to read the fae language from the library. Ava explains to both Torin and the librarian that she was found in August, and when Turn looks through the records, they realize that it’s the month of the massacre. The librarian tells them that there was no one in the noble family that died in August and had a daughter in May. But she also says that the servant’s birth and death records are not well kept so if she’s one of the common fae, her chances of finding her parents are slim to none. Ava’s thoughts swirl with nightmarish visions of monsters no one wants to name after that.

The same night, Ava attends the ball and makes friends with Alice, the princess of the Kelpie clan, giving her advise that she is sweet and gorgeous and that she will find the right person for her. Torin and Ava dance to something akin to the tango and she is turned on by him. When they finish, and he dances with Alice, then Moira, Ava decides to slip away. Torin follows her, telling her that she shouldn’t be walking alone, and asks her to tell him how much she hates him. Their distaste for each other goes deeper but then he kisses her and declares that he has never wanted anyone more.

Ava wakes up to screaming, and finds out that Princess Alice has been murdered. Torin sends everyone to their room, and Ava and Shalini scour the room for secret passages, finding none. The next day, Torin and Aeron visit and tell them that Alice’s room had a secret door disguised as a painting, and Moira’s room also had a door, but that he cannot go around making accusations that it’s Moira who has murdered Alice. Aeron comments about Torin’s prior history with Moira’s family, but does not elaborate.

Torin takes Ava to the Temple of Ostara to train her for the fencing tournament. He gives her a crystal to help her move faster during the fight with the other princesses. They kiss again, and Torin pushes her away, saying that he does not like her. She feels her heart break anyway. When Ava returns to her room, Shalini shows her the secret entrance that she’s discovered, and they wander its hallways until they get to a tower where they find a diary kept by a girl with the initial M, who is clearly in love with Torin. In the diary, she says that Torin is distant with her, and that her sister has foretold that she will die by Torin’s hand, and that he would bury her frozen body below the Temple of Ostara. Shalini feels bad that she persuaded Ava to come here to Faerie, but Ava does not want to leave anymore.

The night before the tournament, all the women still in competition have dinner. During the dinner, Torin announces who will fight with whom the next day. Ava is up against Princess Eliza, as the last fight of the group. Moira passes her phone giggling and says that one of the ladies had disgraced herself. Turns out that in revenge, Andrew has released naked pictures of Ava to the public, and also spread lies about her. Ava rushes out and Torin follows her telling her that he chose wrong, and that she must not ever touch him. When she returns to the throne room, one princess calls her gorgeous, while Moira says that she will run her blade through her.

The next day, the fencing tournament begins. During Moira’s fight, as she’s the first one, Princess Orla who Ava and Shalini met on Day 1 as she was curious about the room they were stying in, comes by. She gives a medallion for Ava meant to protect her, except that it burns Ava. Orla then makes a comment that everyone keeps getting it wrong against Moira–it’s almost like they’re reacting too late to the blade. Orla states that the blade is glamoured to appear in a different location than it actually is. Ava’s fight against Eliza sees Ava the victor as Eliza does not want this anymore. Ava gives Eliza a few chances to strike her for her honor. When Ava fights Moira, she realizes that Orla was correct, as she’s late to block the sword. So Ava uses her hearing and focuses on the whistling of the blade, not on her vision, effectively blocking Moira’s blade, and ultimately beating her.

Torin sends her a messages that night that she’s the winner, but that he will announce it the next day. That same evening, Ava overhears Moira arguing with someone at the door telling them that she has resigned and wishes to speak with Ava. Moira tells her that she’s had a premonition and that is why she’s resigned. She tells Ava that she will die at Torin’s hands and when Ava dismisses her comment, she mentions Milisanda–her sister. She tells Ava that she had a premonition that Milisanda would be killed by Torin and buried in the Temple of Ostara. Moira then claims to have entered the competition to, on the off chance she became queen, to remind Torin of what he was–Death. As to why she is warning Ava, she hates Ava and Ava does not belong here. She believes that there is something wrong with Ava, something evil, so she wants to make sure that Ava doesn’t have a sense of victory before she dies, and so that she dies in terror.

Ava gets dressed and heads to the throne room to see Torin to find out the truth, in case Moira is playing a con. she asks Torin about it all and he doesn’t say much beyond the fact that he cares for her more than he should. Ava turns away from him in frustration, and he touches her to stop her. They watch in horror as her arm turns white and blue, but the ice also climbs onto him, freezing him so he’s unable to stop it. It freezes his throne and cracks it, so he tells her to get to the Queen’s throne in hopes that she could counter his magic, and she scrambles for it.

Chaos erupts in the throne room, and Ava’s vision is laced with a green haze; upon an inhale, she feels like she is in a forest, and there’s a scene of a forest. The cold over takes her and she whispers that she wants to go home. Magic rushes through her and she finds herself in the forest, with no idea where she is, but when she looks down at her reflections, she has a golden pair of horns. She realizes then that she is an Unseelie, and this is her true home–the home of the wild beasts.

My Thoughts: This is a bit of a slow book, though it has an interesting premise. One thing that I can’t really understand is Moira’s absolute disdain and hatred of Ava from the get go–I am unclear on whether there is a deeper story as to why she hates Ava beyond the fact that her sister was killed by Torin, in which case, I would think she would hate Torin. It definitely feels convenient to the plot, and the curse that Torin is under is not clearly explained or what exactly caused it, at least not from his perspective. So overall there are some details missing, and while the premise of the book was certainly interesting, it just felt like there are some quite big gaps that I’m not able to really overcome and those detract from the enjoyment of the book.