I can’t say this was a favourite book as I did find it hard to finish as I felt it may have been a little on the young side. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

quick review because i’m too exhausted to think. i enjoyed this new installment but nothing will compare to the first one i’m afraid and i was also a bit disappointed by the second book as well. DE and Xander had good chemistry but nothing crazy if i’m being honest and the story was just fine. i’m probably not into this series anymore but they are enjoyable fairytales retelling. 3⭐️

I was so looking forward to this one! I loved the first book in the series. The second book was without a doubt even better and the third one was gonna be a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, which is one of the trickiest tales to retell. I was gonna wait patiently for the paperback to arrive, but then I spotted the book on Netgalley and of course I had to request it right away! I was incredibly thankful that Hodder and Stoughton granted me a copy.

Sleeping Beauty is a wonderful fairytale, but incredibly tricky to retell and even harder to do right in a world where there might or might not be magic. Well, it's clear that in this book THERE is magic. And yet it's still done in such a way that maybe this kind of magic does exist in our world too. And although the author did add a lot of stuff and shuffled a lot of other stuff around, the key elements of the fairytale were still very easy to recognize.

What I absolutely loved about this book is how entwined history and present are. We've been wandering around St. Rosetta for a few books already and it feels like this book really gives us a little more background information on the founding family, why it was founded and what skeletons are hiding in the closet. And I also quite like how everything we discover does immediately lead to action and active changes. Tradition? In some cases that really really isn't important.

I also liked the romance in this book. Since especially DE is not the kind of girl to fall in love at first sight it takes a long time before the characters dare to admit that they're in love with each other, but that also means they really took the time to get to know each other, to build a connection, to share secrets and feel that they can trust each other with everything. I also loved loved loved that one short moment between Alexander and Alaric!

I hope the author isn't out of ideas yet, because I'm far from done with St. Rosetta's Academy!

3.5 stars
I think out of all the Sandhya Menon books that I have read, Of Dreams and Destiny is my favourite. It is full of supernatural and spooky stuff, with an adorable romance and a great cast of characters. It was nice to finally have Daphne's story in my hands to see her go on an amazing adventure of her own. In comparison to the first book in the series, I think this is definitely the best one.

Personally, I think the St. Rosetta's Academy series is a great younger YA series for someone who is just starting to read the genre. It has a little bit of everything, from great storylines, characters to amazing plots full of spooky, supernatural things; this series is a fun and quick read and honestly, I might come back and reread the whole thing again sometime.

For full disclosure I want to say that i have not read the first two books in this series but i was made to understand that it was a problem and that this series was more a series of standalone. After reading this one I can confirm that you do not have to read the others to understand everything, of course if you do it is going to give you more background information on the other characters of the story.
I really liked the first half of this novel, it was funny and sweet, i took a break from it because of my anxiety and i came back to it and unfortunately the spell broke and I was not enjoying it anymore.
This story is super fast paced everything seems to happen in a couple of weeks which means that the romance also happens in a couple of weeks and feels extra rushed. Do not worry I remember being 17 and falling in love way too fast but it just felt so cringe. To be honest the insta love wouldn’t have bothered me if the rest of the story was not so cringe but unfortunately this was cringe fest. I would recommend this story to 14 or 15yo but not 17yo.
Overall I still enjoyed it for what it was even if I thought that Xander’s motives were questionable, like straight up why?

“Never giving your heart away at all is a way scarier prospect than having your heart broken.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s senior year, and Daphne Elizabeth “DE” McKinley, the heiress to the McKinley hotel dynasty, is still licking her wounds after a painful breakup. She’s determined to keep her head down and her heart shuttered—even from new student Xander, no matter how dreamy he is. Then Rosetta Academy is swallowed up by a sudden and massive spring storm, and very strange things start happening. The students start to fall into a stupor, then a deep sleep…one by one. Soon, DE is racing against the clock to find the source of the strange spell and stop it before it claims the entire school. Could Xander’s help be the key to solving the mystery?

Daphne Elizabeth has always been an interesting character and big personality in the friendship group so I knew getting to read from her perspective would be engaging. There’s a lot going on in DE’s head, mostly still reeling from Alaric’s betrayal and the effect he had on her, but I felt like there was a slight disconnect with her story. With the other two books, we got to know the nitty gritty but it’s as if DE’s character has to remain shrouded in mystery which is a shame really. I like getting to delve deep into different characters - more so if they’ve previously been background characters. We didn’t get a deep dive into her background but we did get to understand DE as a person more which was nice. I really liked the arc she went through in this book and how she ended up. I think it was a great choice.
Xander is a mysterious one in the beginning. New kid not opening up about his life? Colour me intrigued! I do think Xander is a nice character. His POV was interesting to read from and seeing his dedication to his family’s plight was admirable. I loved his friendship with DE - it was definitely a highlight for the book. I think he’d fit in quite nicely with the bunch of misfits that have banded together over the course of the trilogy.

Having had enjoyed the previous two books in the St Rosetta’s Academy trilogy, I knew I had to jump into the third and final book! The overall plot wasn’t too bad being a Sleeping Beauty retelling but it was perhaps not as intriguing to me as the previous two have been. Something I do really love though is the element on magic that is woven into each of the books - each with a curse of their own it seems. I do love the collide of reality and fantasy. The characters were, as always, well fleshed out and engaging. I always love that we get to see the other characters we’ve gotten to know in the other books - especially when we get to see how their stories have progressed beyond the ending of their own stories. The romance wasn’t as heavy or thrilling as the other books which was a bit of a shame to me. I just wanted a bit more of it but that’s me being picky. The ending felt very rewarding for the finale of this trilogy. Such a shame that it is now over!

Overall, Of Dreams and Destiny is a lovely final book to this great trilogy!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you again to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advanced copy of this book. Review will be live on my blog on release day.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Of Dreams and Destiny is an engaging YA dark academia novel. It was an enjoyable read, easy to read as a stand-alone. It was the first novel I had read by the author and I will be looking for the other novels. I really enjoyed the characters of DE and Xander; and reading about their story at the school. Looking forward to see where it goes next!!

Book Review 📚
Of Dreams and Destiny by Sandhya Menon - 4/5 ⭐

The 3rd and final book of the Rosetta's Academy series and that breaks my heart. I have loved each and every book from this series and I hate to see it come to and end! But I am also intrigued to see where Menon's literary genius takes her.

There is so much thought and emotion that go into the characters of the series, each of them having their own personality. It's beautifully crafted. From the beginning to the end I have been unbelievably happy with character developments as well as the introduction to new characters along the way. It was effortless to read about each character.

There's a good amount of romance throughout the 3rd book and in general the emotions throughout the series have been insane. Ups and downs, happy and sads, there was no in-between. Menon finished the trilogy amazingly and it couldn't of ended a better way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for allowing me to read this ARC - this is an HONEST review from my own personal opinion.