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