Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing for me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A Dark and Hollow Star is a thrilling and addictive blend of urban fantasy and mystery.

The story revolves around a diverse quartet of characters; Arlo, Aurelian, Nausicaä and Vehan, drawn together to investigate a series of murders.

“A sidhe prince, a lesidhe guard, an ironborn girl, and a former fury—they seemed less like a serious investigative team and more like a lead-in to some terrible joke.”

Nausicaä is sassy, sarcastic and stubborn, hell bent on wreaking havoc and chaos after being exiled from the immortal realm. Arlo is a half-human ‘ironborn’ member of the fae royal family trying to find her place in the world.

Then there’s Prince Vehan a total sweetheart from the seelie summer court, and his retainer Aurelian. They’re both pining after the other and completely oblivious to it. There’s definitely more to come with these two and I suspect they’ll feature heavily in the sequel.

The supporting characters are just as great. My favourite being Prince Celadon (details on how to join his fan club needed please) and I’m begging that we see more of him in the second instalment.

There is a lot of information to digest at the beginning of the story. But once Ashley Shuttleworth had introduced this incredible world and cast of characters the plot completely enchanted me and I just couldn’t put this down.

I loved the plot and the characters so much, this book was the perfect balance between character and plot driven, I can’t wait for book two.

1.5 stars

The main issue I had was struggling to connect with the characters. There were several reasons why - the first being that the characters are not entwinned from the start, and I need that for large cast books. If they're separate for a while, there's the chance that I'll forget about some of them, and will almost certainly not care about several. I will automatically latch onto the first POV character I read, and if another character isn't somehow linked to them from the get go (personally or by an obvious plot point) then I simply won't care about them as everything revolves around that first POV.

To compound this issue, the chapters are very long and not evenly distributed. Of the four POVs, Arlo gets the most attention, and two others are hardly present at the start. With the chapters being so long, I hit the 20% mark, when one character gets his second appearance, and had completely forgotten he existed. This was also the character whose sections were added to the end of other chapters, rather than marked out the way the others' were, so it took me a while to realise that he was supposed to be another character in another place, not a continuation, which confused me a lot at first!

As for the characters themselves, they felt like pretty cliche characters. Take Arlo, the main character (I think). She's a half human, half fae - and feels out of place in both worlds and sneered upon as she tries to exist between the real world and the hidden world. It felt like her introduction leant too heavily on that, that there wasn't else to her character at the crucial set up, so she felt very dimensionless and flat.

The fallen fury was vengeful in the prologue, but then just weary and "I'm going to be a pain, but more because that's what I've become" in the main book, which is not a character type I like. There were two guys, but I can't really remember them because of how little there were in that start, so it was always a bit of a shock when they came up in the book. A "oh yeah, you're in this too".

With such troubles connecting to the characters, I struggled to get invested into the plot too, as I didn't care for the characters so they could go into danger without me caring.

An original, thrilling and wonderful take on YA fantasy, that breathes new life to the fae that have become commonplace in the genre. These aren’t your medieval faeries from A Court of Thorns and Roses or The Folk of The Air, they’re young, modern, queer and absolutely full of personality. That’s why my review for this book is going to be slightly all over the place when I love a book to this capacity I struggle to put how I feel into words, ironically.

A Dark and Hollow Star meets all the criteria I want from a favourite book and even verges into a comfort book. It has an adventure full of magic with dark stakes, unlikely alliances between hot-headed characters, lots of gay pining and so much worldbuilding you feel completely sucked in. ADAHS followers our four main characters;

Nausicaa - a sarcastic, rightfully stubborn, extremely strong ex-Fury who should have no interest in the murders the plot is based around. However, her strength hides her depression (for which she freely admits to goes to therapy - yes to that!) from losing someone she loved and for that she vowed to never love again. Easily the character you want to root for after you find out about her, her dialogue and interactions with the other characters are the best full of intellect, quick wit and loving condensing remarks and her developing friendship with Arlo is so rewarding.

Arlo - The ‘main’ character, a sweet and naive ironborn (half-fae) girl. She’s slightly awkward and completely unsure of herself, she doesn’t have a sense of belonging. Except her cousin and mother, her fae family don’t want her and the human realm seems to have no place for her. Her character development is one of my favourites, especially because it’s so tied to Nausicaa’s. Also she loves fandom stuff, like manga and video games and it just makes her so much more real.

Vehan - My personal favourite character, my sweet prince, he really is a complex little bean. The High Prince of the Seelie Summer Court, there is so much more going on underneath the perfect exterior he works so hard to maintain and there is a moment where he broke my heart. He understands the privilege of his position and he is so clearly burdened by it.

Aurelian - Vehan’s retainer, his guard, the two of them were once best friends but they’re still madly in love with each other, idiots-to-lovers like the author themself said. Like Nausicaa, he has a hard exterior, which may bring them to a head with each other, but there is no denying he is sweet. The world hasn’t had a chance to properly disillusion him yet, he started maintaining his distance from Vehan from both there own good.

There is also a strong cast of side and supporting characters, every single one of whom feels developed and like a real person regardless of if they appear for one page or are a constant presence. That’s why this is so comforting to me, all of these characters feel real if you take away the fact they’re, fae, faeries, trolls, goblins or whatever else, they all feel like people you could meet on the street. Another brilliant part of this book feeling so real is the world, it’s set between Toronto and Nevada and Shuttleworth’s writing of the former is deeply personal while also being atmospheric and imagination-inducing. The way the magic simply just existed almost makes me want to go to Toronto to find it, even though it isn’t actually real.

Despite this being a debut there are no weak links in the writing, the dialogue is just as brilliant as the prose and I absolutely LOVE when you can tell a book is work of a complete passion by the author and they have even put parts of themselves into the book. Shuttleworth weaved so many influences in here (greek mythology, fae and faerie tales, RPGs, dungeons and dragons) and yet they don’t get muddled up because it’s not written to be confusing like so many other fantasy stories that reach the scale of A Dark and Hollow Star. My only issue was how unresolved Aurelian and Vehan’s story felt, but I suspect it is because they are the ones that will lead us into the sequel.

Before I conclude I wanted to notes few things I adored; a character that uses they/them pronouns, the use of actual sexuality and gender labels for the characters that they use to describe themselves, a character that uses NEOPRONOUNS, describing a girl as handsome, the discussion of mental illness that isn’t forced. But in conclusion, A Dark and Hollow Star is my new comfort book and also a book I want to see completely take over the YA Fantasy genre, it is a shining example of what the genre is headed toward. There are wonderful ships and relatable characters and beautiful writing. It is a book I think any fantasy fan would enjoy, with enough magic and plot to go around because it strikes a perfect balance between character and plot-driven.

A Dark & Hollow Star follows four misfit's who come together to try and stop a series of gruesome unexplained murders, with the courts not taking the issue seriously its falls down to these young individuals to find a way of working together to stop the murders and keep their world and magic a secret from the humans.

We get a few different POV's through this book, the main four are:

Arlo - half ironborn and half human
Nausicaä - an ex Fury
Vehan - Summer court prince
Aurelian - Vehan's oldest friend and bodyguard

The dynamics between these four work really well, the sarcasm was really well done and I really feel you can start to see the bonds of some strong friendships forming.

I loved Arlo's cousin Celadon, he wasn't a main character and didn't have is own POV but I love his friendship and bond with Arlo and I loved his humour. His prank on the summer queen had me laughing out loud. I'm really keen to see more of him in the next book.

I loved all the members of the Hunt, especially Lethe. I feel like there's more to his backstory and I'm desperate to know why he's looking out for Arlo so much.
The Leader of the Hunt knows Nausicaä and I feel like there might have been some spark between them at some point!

I feel like there's some more secrets to be shared about Arlo's past. She keeps referring to memory's that suddenly resurface, did something happen to her when her fathers memory was wiped of all magic?

I really enjoyed reading this, the world building was really strong and the characters development was really great to see. I'm a big character reader so this was really important for me.
The relationships that begin to form are nicely done, I'm so here for Arlos and Nausicaä, Nausicaä was one of my favorite characters, I just love her sass and bad ass attitude but you can still tell that she cares underneath it all. I'm hoping we get more Vehan and Aurelian being honest with one another and having some more moments together.

There was a little too much info to digest at the beginning and it took me a while to understand the magic system and all the courts, but once I got it I couldn't put the book down. I think I finished it in 2 days.

I'm really keen to see where book two goes. I adored all these characters and I need to see more of them. I also loved the pop-culture references through out, it brought some humour and light to the sometimes dark situations.

Thank you so NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an e-arc of this, I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be getting Book 2!

If Modern Faerie Tales and A Court of Thorns and Roses had a baby, you would get A Dark and Hollow Star. Except it has more diversity. It focusses on some fae and faerie teens - Arlo, the royal without enough magic to be fae, Nausicaa, exiled from the immortal realm, Vehan, the prince with a big heart and tyrant for a mother, and Aurelian, companion and protector of Vehan.

So what did I like about this book? The diversity was great and natural, I loved the dynamic between Arlo and Nausicaa, who are sunshine and grumpy. I think Nausicaa was my favourite character because she has a hard shell and soft centre. The characters are definitely the strongest aspect of the book in general.

But, the book suffers from having a ridiculous amount of popular human culture references - Harry Potter, Twilight, Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons being just a few. I found it distracting and unnecessary and once I noticed it I couldn't un-notice. I also found the world-building to be messy, with lots of long info dumps. It also didn't feel unique to me. Arlo is a little bit too chosen one for me as well.

It's an ambitious debut with four big points of view, and a fifth that appears every now and then, and a large number of characters outside of these. It has really cute romances, but overall, a very average read that was possibly a bit too long.

I wanna start off this review by saying I normally hate fantasy, I hate wordy books because it’s hard to pay attention and I always end up having to reread the chapter to make sure I didn’t misread something, but this book is the exception.

I loved this book, loved the characters loved the descriptions and even dialogue I found myself being obsessed with. Ashley Shuttleworth did an amazing job at writing these characters and giving them their own distinct personalities and even though I still struggled with keeping up with all the foreign words I still managed to paint the picture in my head.

In this book we follow the views of four characters, Arlo Jarsdel (half human fae) Alecto/ Nausicaä (immortal exiled fury) Vehan (a prince) and Aurelian (Vehan’s steward). The chemistry and dynamic between these four characters are amazing so much that I wish we got to see more. Another wish that I had was that we got to see more of prince Celadon who is Arlo’s cousin.

I highly recommend this book.

A good adventurous read with a dash of romance and a bucket of comedy. I don’t know if there’s going to be a second book (looks like the end did set up for a series) but if there is I’d be the first to buy. Look forward to seeing more of these characters.

Why do I keep requesting and reading fantasy when I know I'm just not really invested anymore?
Any guesses? Because I sure don't.
This is totally a it's me and not the book situation. I wanted to read and love this because LGBTQ+ representation in fantasies is still so rare that it always gives me that little extra incentive to pick a book up.
And while I enjoyed some of the story, most of it really dragged for me even though the characters were interesting, because again, I shouldn't be allowed to pick up fantasy books anymore.

God, this was such a fantastic book! A Dark and Hollow Star is the compelling, imaginative urban fantasy novel I've been chasing ever since I finished City of Bones five years ago. This book had everything I needed right now, from genuine queer representation to an engrossing mystery, faery courts, and the found family trope!

The characters, their friendships, and their relationships are really what make this book so interesting, and I can't believe I'm going to have wait until 2022 to see them again. Nos, the fierce, chaotic, antisocial fury who's introduced at the beginning as someone who's not afraid to sass the judges presiding over her own murder trial, is my favourite character. Her relationship with Arlo is just... *chefs kiss*, and I'm so glad I finally have a new WLW pairing to obsess over! Like a lot of other early reviewers, I desperately wanted Celadon to be a main character, and I'm still over here brooding because I didn't get my way.

Also, I need evil, mysterious, well-rounded villains to enjoy a fantasy book, and Ashley Shuttleworth delivered in spades. I'm still trying to work out one of the villain's motives, and I need to get my hands on the next book to see if I'm right!

My main (and really only) problem with this book was that the pacing was a little slow, especially during the first few chapters. I think being thrown straight into a trial with no idea who these characters are, why I should care, or how the world they inhabited works was a little... jarring? I put this book down at first because I really wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue or not. I was terrified that one of my most anticipated releases of 2021 was going to be a DNF! However, I decided to come back and keep going, and I'm glad I did because once I settled into the book and got my bearings, I couldn't stop reading!

Overall, despite a slightly rocky start, A Dark and Hollow Star has quickly become one of my favourite books, full of diverse, well-rounded, fascinating characters, comforting tropes that don't feel overused or tired, and original, intriguing worldbuilding. I can't wait for everyone to be able to enjoy this book in February!

4.5 Stars

I really loved the setting and premise of this book. I don't think I've read many books set in Canada, so it was nice to have some things mixed up a little. Although it wasn't the main point, I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I loved the representation in this book. The characters felt natural and their identities weren't the main focal point of their characters, but rather a piece of who they were. It was nice to see this normalised.

I had a couple of minor issues with this book, which is why I didn't give this 5 stars. The first being that of the parallel storyline. I don't know if some of the information was supposed to be a surprise or a twist, or if it was supposed to be easy to understand what was happening. It seemed to be really easy to understand the potential subterfuge. The other issue, was the relationship between the two main characters. I only knew that there was meant to be a relationship there because I'd heard there was one. It didn't come across as strongly in the writing. I don't know what the issue was, but it seemed to be a little weak. However, I did enjoy the friendship that grew between these characters.

A Dark and Hollow Star was one of my most anticipated books of the year. It’s urban fantasy at its finest, with fae, magic and all kinds of other fantastical elements, existing right next to our human world, unbeknownst to most. Additionally, it features an ensemble cast made out of only queer characters. It’s truly the book of my teenage dreams!

Right from the beginning, I was mesmerised by the world Ashley Shuttleworth created. The world-building is so vivid and colourful, the different Courts with their rules, the magic, and—of course—the mystery that ties it all together: why are the ironborn being killed? A Dark and Hollow Star is an incredibly enthralling story and I was captivated from page one, when we met the Fury Alecto—known in this book as Nausicaä, after she’s been outcast from the Immortal Realm—and learned of her fate. I love how the different POVs bring this story together, love the different insights in both, life as fae royalty, but also life as a magical being in the human world (in this case, mostly in Toronto). It’s filled with nods to pop culture and so many normal, everyday moments: from Lord of the Rings & Marvel, to smartphones, texting & watching YouTube videos, and much more.

Video game fans in particular will fall in love with A Dark and Hollow Star, I think. Not only is it positively riddled with gaming references (The Legend of Zelda and Finally Fantasy are particular favourites, it seems), but a part of the magic system is even based on dice and games such as Dungeons & Dragons. That’s right: there’s a magic die one of the characters is able to roll to determine the success of the outcome of various situations.

And we have so many amazing tropes and dynamics: there’s the childhood friends to lovers trope (with lots of misunderstandings & obliviousness & pining); the chosen one trope (with a very distinct spin & an unwilling hero!); and one of the characters is a barista—guys, one scene here has two of the main characters in a situation straight out of a coffee shop AU! This could not get any better! And I really want to make clear again that all the main characters are queer, and there are also a lot of queer side characters. The rep is amazing! Out of the four protagonists, one is lesbian, one is gay, one is bisexual, and one is questioning. There are also multiple genderqueer and nonbinary side characters (it's said that many of the deities are genderfluid and use they/them pronouns, which I think is amazing)!

What Ashley Shuttleworth does incredibly well is give the reader a sense of the characters. There are five different POVs, but all of them are so distinct from each other; all have their very own personalities. Through memories and flashbacks, often tied to deep emotions, the characters come alive, become real. Maybe it’s the perfect mixture of fantasy elements and everyday-situations, like visiting cafés or watching movies on a laptop and falling asleep next to each other—whatever the reason, I’ve rarely come across characters that feel so entirely themselves, like they could step out of the pages any moment now. The small, intimate moments in A Dark and Hollow Star are some of my favourite things ever.

And the dynamics between these wonderful characters are just as perfectly developed. They work so well with each other, they form bonds, despite all their differences. In some cases, there’s already a lot of history there, in others, it’s just a sort of instant chemistry. I love how Arlo, Nausicaä, Vehan and Aurelian act as a team, how they come together and decide to go on a mission to find who’s behind these murders, because they all realise that the adults in their lives are too comfortable in their denial to help. I just feel like Ashley Shuttleworth was incredibly aware of the more common tropes in the YA fantasy genre and decided to either draw notice to them (in the case of children having to save the world, while the adults are too divided to decide how to act), or just turn them on their head entirely.

Overall, there just wasn’t a possibility of me giving A Dark and Hollow Star anything less than five stars. From the moment I first heard about it, I knew I would adore it, and still Ashley Shuttleworth managed to surprise me—I loved their story even more than I ever imagined. Fae and magic, all the pop culture and gaming references my fangirl heart could ever desire, a cast made up entirely of queer characters; the way magic and everyday moments come together to create a world that’s both vivid but also almost intimate, in the way the characters seem to come alive, how they live and breath and love and fight on the page. God, I love this book so endlessly much. Fans of books such as City of Bones & The Cruel Prince: this is the book for you (but it has much more queer representation, so it's even better!) ♥️

31%, that's how far I got in this book and it's a bloody miracle I even managed that. At first I blamed my book slump for my disinterest in this novel, but it's just not my cup of tea. If you need almost 160 pages just to introduce your characters and your world then you're not writing in a way that I like.
I requested this book on Netgalley mainly because of the amazing cover and the promise of a great magical novel. It did not deliver... And I really gave it a chance, I usually DNF at 100 pages and I read almost 160! I just couldn't continue. The writing was too dense, the world too uninteresting, and the storyline too boring.

I so wanted to love this book.

I've been so excited for it. When I got an ARC I even squealed. I was even willing to put up with the seelie/unseelie stuff that bugs me.

But I can't do it. I can't do the mix of the fae - sidhe from Ireland being in the Scottish courts - nope.

The characters seem good and the plot fascinating but this book really isn't for me.

I don't think I've ever before read a book where I loved all of the main characters so much that I couldn't possibly choose a favourite! Each of the main 5 are so brilliantly written, I would happy sit for hours and just read them having dinner together.

The world building was a bit more of a let down - I found it difficult to follow in parts and still have some questions. However, I did really enjoy the book overall, and thought the pacing was just right!

I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for a free e-copy of this book.

This review is going to sound like a giant cliché and I apologise in advance. It’s because whenever I love a book perfect like this one, I am terrible at writing a 5-star review. I don’t read much urban fantasy, but I decided to pick up this one as the cover keeps showing up on my social feeds.

This book was a massive surprise. It had a slow start, and at 20% I was actually debating with myself about continuing or not. I am glad I stick with it because after that it was incredibly difficult to put it down.

The story goes around Nausicaä, a fury who was exiled from her realm after killing mortals without permission. She is stranded in the human world until a series of murders force her to get involved with the royal fae family and another human to discover who or what is behind the death of ironborn children.

The most impressive feature of this story is the epic world-building, whenever you think you’ve figured out this world, the writer adds something to the scenario or introduces new supernatural beings, or new rules to the magic system expanding it even further. That was absolutely mind-blowing, how everything from this world was all fitted into an intricated web of faerie politics and mysterious murders. Can you hear my brain exploding? Still, I had the feeling we just scratched the surface of this world and the writer has more to show us with the next book.

I also appreciated that as a change, this story takes place both in modern Toronto and fae world and it’s amazing how mixing these two realities totally works. I loved that it wasn’t the typical New York or London, a lovely change of scenery.

On top of everything, you get a book with a great diversity representation across main and side characters. One of the main characters, Nausicaä is probably the main reason why I loved this story so much. She is such a great character, she talks with no filter, she says whatever she thinks about and she has no problem admitting she has mental health issues, and that she went to see a therapist sometimes. And also, she is absolutely hilarious. I loved all the nerdy jokes, all the references to videogames and Star Wars.

I truly enjoyed every aspect of this story, the plot and the character, and I can’t wait for the sequel. I think it’s darker, grittier and more mature than City of Bones and on the topic, I would add that I strongly recommend checking the content/trigger warnings first, because this book explores a wide range of tough issues.

Side note about this e-arc, I was confused about Hero’s POV as there was no physical sign or break when they started and they were just attached at the end of another character’s POV but I guess this will be fixed in the final version.

This book is going to be your best read of this Winter and thanks to the vivid descriptions and almost informal writing style you will devour this book in no time!

Characters with attitude, Amazing world building and Fae what more could I want from a book?
This book was one of my highly anticipated releases of 2021 and I wasn’t let down not even a bit! With multiple points of view that flowed naturally and a truly interesting magic system I couldn’t put this book down. The characters chemistry was one of the first things that pulled me in and with the hints of romanceu I can’t wait to see where these lead. The plot was fleshed out and had me on the edge of my seat throughout this was such a fast paced book and I loved every minute of it.
What really pushed this book to a 5 star for me was the characters all broken in their own way all coming together to find a serial killer whose crimes could expose the hidden faerie world. The banter between the characters (special mention to Arlo and Nausicaa) had me laughing and really just added something a little extra to the book.


This was such a strong start to a new series and a world I didn’t want to let go of on the last page. P.S Did I mention how much I loved the characters!

The whole time I was reading this I just wanted her to step on my throat because YES.

LGBT rep? (lesbian, bi, gay and gender fluid rep here guys, I’m screaming, we love to see that rep.)

I’m here for anything revolving around fantasy storylines but honestly felt this book impressed me more than any Sarah J. Mass story. Whilst the world building left some room for improvement I was wildly drawn to the characters and each of their backgrounds.

It’s also really bloody cool to have to much mental health exploration, as someone with PTSD it’s awesome to see subjects like these brought up and handled really well (definitely take a look at the TW’s before reading if you have concerns)

All in all I really loved this . It’s a breath of fresh air with solid representation in a genre where that can often be hard to find.

Grab this book🙌🏻

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for approving me for a digital arc, I’ll be off to grab a paper copy on release.

A Dark and Hollow Star - Ashley Shuttleworth

I received an e-arc of this book from Netgalley, which I’m very grateful for.

In A Dark and Hollow Star we meet very diverse cast of characters. Arlo, the iron born half-fae, who resembles more human qualities than fae qualities. A tempestuous fury called Nausicaä, exiled to earth from the Immortal Realm and hellbent on revenge. A dutiful fae prince, called Vehan, determined to earn his place on the throne. And last, but not least, the prince’s brooding guardian, Aurelian, burdened with a terrible secret.

What do they have in common, you ask? Well I didn’t really figure that out ‘till I almost finished the book. Because if I have to describe it, it was confusing. The The beginning was a bit hard to follow, but that is a feeling I always have when reading a fantasy with multiple POV’s. It is hard to figure out who is who, what they have in common ect. Well, that feeling of confusing never faded (sadly) and made it quite a struggle to finish this book. We mostly followed two perspectives in this book, (Arlo and Nausicaä) which made it really hard to care for the other two (Vehan and Aurelian). As in, I didn’t care.. At all. I liked the other two perspectives, which we kept following, but it was annoying when then (after chapters of not switching POV’s) we finally switched to the Aur. I didn’t want to know their story. We barely were past the introductions for them, while with the other characters we were deep in to a story.
So that mostly the beginning. We slowly get some introductions to all the eight courts of folk, who are concealed by magic and young by law to not harm humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts - until a series of gruesome murders rock the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world. I did actually get excited when the murders took place, even though I was still quite confused. I slowly started to get sucked in to the story (mind you, I was half way done with the book), but I still wasn’t a fan of the POV switching. In my opinion, we should’ve seen more of Vehan and Aurelian, because it was very hard for me to care about them.
Something which I wished we would’ve seen more, is more of the courts. The book feels more of an urban fantasy, then an actually fantasy book, due to that. It takes mostly place in Toronto, though at some times we have some magical places in Toronto.

The writing style was okay, though I do feel like everything was stretched out quite a lot, As in, this book would’ve been so much better if it only had 350 pages or so. The 500+ pages feel quite overdone, and it made it so hard to finish. Because it was boring! We had some exciting times, but most of the things were stretched so far that it made it hard for me to actually care.

Now, it does sounds like I hated this book, and I didn’t. It was an okay read. But it was so disappointing for me, since I was hoping for something so different. Especially after reading the synopsis, which sounds so freaking amazing! But the overall feeling of confused stayed so long with me, it was also hard to let go of certain feelings I developed while reading. The ending was really good though, and I started to (finally) love the story after hitting the 75% mark, but that is way to late. I should’ve fallen in love within the first 100 pages and not feel confused.

So yeah, I’m a bit disappointed. I ended up giving this book 3,5 stars.

Pheeeeeeeeeeew That was a RIDE.
Look, this met its expectations and that is saying a LOT, because I was expecting a LOT.

A Dark and Hollow Star brings us to Toronto where the High King of all courts resides. That's also where Arlo lives. The King of the fae is her uncle but she was never accepted by her family since her father is just a human and she's never shown proper powers, but, her cousin, Celadon, the High Prince, is her best friend and the two are thick as thieves. Arlo finds herself at the wrong place at the wrong time and witnesses a very weird murder that won't get out of her head, especially since it's linked to a whole series of murder. And there enters, Nausicaä, a banished Fury, also known as the Dark Star and who is pretty much the boogeyman of the magical world. Nausicaä does not want to be in Toronto but she made a promise she can't break and has to see this to the end. She's also trying to catch a Reaper so you know she busy but not to busy to start scheming with Arlo and saving her life from time to time.
Further south, near Las Vegas, we found Vehan, the Prince of the Seelie Court of Summer and his retainer, Aurelian. The two used to be best friends before their relationship soured and now find themselves in the middle of an investigation about missing humans…

This book was great. I was engaged from the prologue to the epilogue with no stops in between. I found myself having to close it and scream from time to time, I was just too stressed.
I just loved everything about it. The plot, the characters, the relationships, the setting, the world, everything. The characters were layered and so imperfect, in the best way. It made them so relatable and I couldn't get enough. Their relationships to each other gave me all the feels, whether they were friendships or romantic or family... They made me laugh and pine and cry and everything in between, all of it did, really.
I found the plot to be perfectly paced and I honestly wouldn't change a thing.
I cannot wait to read this over and over again and everything else by Ashley Shuttleworth. This book definitely made them a one-click author to me.

This book confused me so much. In the beginning, I felt as if we were thrown into this world with a banished female fae, and I was intrigued. However, we were then sent onto another character and another, and I just felt a little overwhelmed and overly confused the entire time.

Most of the time, I had no clue what was going on, and I think that took away from the story.

Did I enjoy what I read? Yes, but I felt as if it could have been a lot better if we were thrown around everywhere and had the chance to digest information and characters fully.

This book is advertised as the Cruel Prince meets City of Bones which really should have told me I wasn’t the right audience as I wasn’t a fan of either book but the premise sounded so good!! Unfortunately I have had to really push myself through this book.

Pros - the representation in this book is done very well . LGBTQ + rep is 👌
Premise is spot on. Mixtures of legends and fae all trying to solve a crime
The descriptions are stunning

Cons- omg I was so confused . There was so much going on and loads of characters and settings and I just got more and more baffled . I couldn’t quite get to grip with what an iron born was and my Arlo wasn’t fae but allowed to be in the world etc etc. I felt like all the main characters were info dumped and it was a lot.


It did get stronger in the second half so do think a lot of people will love this especially the Cruel Prince fans out there . Just not for me. I think I am not the Fae type