I was genuinely torn on how to rate The Third Daughter.

On the one hand, I loved the religion that Adrienne Tooley created, it felt realistic and all the details seemed to have been thoroughly worked out. And that finale!  I raced through it in nearly ninety minutes, it was exceptionally well-paced and gripping.

On the other hand, I took long breaks in my reading of Daughter to finish other books, and therefore it didn't give me as strong an impression of it as I would have liked. Especially in terms of the characters, plot and themes. Which was a shame.

I'll leave this review here for now.

I picked this one up because Adrienne Tooley is honestly a pro at writing sapphic standalone YA fantasy, and then I find out this one isn't standalone. So yes, it ends with a cliffhanger! I don't know if it needed to be more than one book, but I will reserve that judgement for when I read the second one. Which I will probably do.

But! The slow burn romance in this one is great, with a morally gray protagonist as one of the narrators. The world Tooley created was really interesting, peppered with a fantastic cast of characters. I don't think this is my favorite of her books, but I did enjoy it while I was reading it! I didn't want to put it down last night until I finished it. And now I need the second book.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Adrienne Tooley for the advanced copy of The Third Daughter via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel. 

I enjoyed The Third Daughter, it was a well written fantasy genre book and the beginning of an exciting series. 

Tooley writes emotion and feelings very well in this book and I found myself immersed in the story, imagining the characters and the magic with the associated emotion swirling around. It’s a battle of ‘sides’, perceived ‘good’ vs ‘evil’, ‘light’ vs ‘dark’, ‘her’ vs ‘him’. 

Labelled as an LGBTQ+ book, the sapphic nature of the feelings and relationships aren’t a ‘big deal’. There is no coming out, no admission of ‘abnormal’ feelings, no tip toeing around. It’s treated the same as if the feelings and attraction were in a heteronormative novel. 

The book really spoke to me on an emotional level, with an underlying story of breaking through mental barriers of depression. 

I will definitely be reading the subsequent book(s) and really look forward to it! 

Tropes: mistaken identity, peril 

Spice: 2.5/5 

Trigger warnings: Death, Death of a family member, Grief, Violence