(3.5) It was pretty good. The magic system was pretty nice as well. I loved the concept. I also liked the characters, somewhat. I liked Thorn but the main character? Not so much. I have read other reviews which state that the character was very bland. I didn't think it was true at first but I often caught myself imagining a bolder, and a more daring character to replace Ophelia. I also did not like the writing style. I like character interactions and connections so much more in books. I feel as though this is what links them into the world. In this book, they were not very common and I felt myself getting bored pretty quickly.

The world building is immaculate. I don’t know how the author came up with such an in-depth and detailed world. The writing is beautiful and the characters are well developed. The characters feel like real people and have so many fun and bold personalities.

On the other hand, I found the cliffhanger to be annoying. I also thought this book was a little too slow for my taste. While I appreciated the bursts of action and event, this is definitely more of an atmosphere book.

this is one of those books that i simultaneously have many thoughts about and none at all. i am definitely unsure what i feel about it. i think i was j bored even though there was SO MUCH PROMISE. unforch really. no character development of any sort with anybody. flat! i wanted so much more from the world. the cool powers get lost in the Political Posturing why do authors do that so much. wanted to care ab Thorn & others did Not at All // started the tuesday i was alone in manhattan in the nypl's children section, finished a month later at college when i remembered i was reading this.

a fantastic bit of worldbuilding; like peeking into the closet to find an entire universe has manifested before your eyes and fingertips. characters feel a little ya, but honestly, it’s nowhere near a dealbreaker!

The visual descriptions in this book were some of the most beautiful and unique I've read in a book in a long time!

I loved how relatable Ophelia was, she felt more like a real human being than a stereotypical 'strong female main character' usually is. I liked that she wasn't always confident, I like that she was constantly failing, I like that she got colds and bruises and things that affected her like the real world. It made her much more relatable in the plot, made her motivations very clear and understandable.

The only reason I'm knocking off a star is because I feel like the main point of the story is a little hard to figure out. It's just not really explained until about 3/4 of the way through the book, and even then it's not that big of a reveal because it was sort of obvious who the bad guys were going to be and why.

I would like to continue on with the series and find out what happens next!

“And one day, when God was in a really bad mood, he did something enormously stupid. God smashed the world to pieces.” I enjoyed the book! I’d give it 5 stars for world building but 3 stars for characters and their development. I do think the slow character development is on purpose to spread it out for the next few books but I did wish for more in this one, I can’t lie. So- a 4 ⭐️ read for me! The writing was beautiful and the concept of the book is super interesting. You follow Ophelia as her world completely flips on it’s axis and she has to give up, well everything she’s ever known and wanted. Ophelia was a very interesting MC. Although there were many times I wanted to shake her through the pages. The world in the book was really cool to read about and I’m definitely going to read the next book in the series. I want to see the characters grow and hopefully Ophelia stands up for herself! Content warnings: violence and mentions of suicide.

i wanted more of ophelie and mr thorn 😮‍💨

this book changed my life while i was sitting on my couch in cape cod on a foggy summer morning. i don't think i will finish the series unfortunately but i did really like this. the slowburn was SLOWBURNING. and the world was so cool and unlike any other fantasy world i've read about. i liked the main character a lot and her love interest seemed interesting. only thing that threw me off was the french translation probably made that one scene kinda awkward where she just assumed he was in love with her for no reason. like girl calm down. anyways

fantastic world building and characters, but the plot seemed to wander aimlessly at times.

Meh. I do not get the hype at all.

This book took me a hot minute to really get into I felt like the entire almost first half was missing something, what? I’m not actually sure but after like page 260 ish I started to get really pulled in. I’m glad I stuck it out and didn’t drop this book. I did love the world building though.

This book is amazing. There's so much world building yet it's not boring or tedious to read. An incredible start to the series and I'm disappointed I don't have the second book with with right now because I desperately want to know what happens next.

I had heard many good things about this book, but I didn't expect to be this deeply disappointed.

The world building itself had much potential, yet somehow it was presented in an incredibly boring way, particularly through the repetitive writing style.
The descriptions kept repeating themselves unnecessarily, always commenting on Ophelia's tiny size and ugly dresses, Thorn's height and how thin he is, Ophelia's aunt's ugly teeth, and more.
Further, the society was supposed to be matriarchal, but then it was rather the opposite in reality.
Ophelia's powers were so interesting, yet she barely used them for anything even slightly exciting.

Ophelia was an unbearable main character. She kept being passive, letting others speak for her and barely doing anything really. Additionally, she's written as incredibly clumsy, breaking objects here and there. It was so annoying to read. Plus, she keeps calling herself plain and not pretty. So why would someone ever want to marry her? She was so immature, but really lacked that self-awareness. She wasn't even clever which could have redeemed her a little. Ophelia had no good qualities; she was just flawed.
Thorn can't show any form of politeness which was, again, annoying. I also couldn't find myself being interested in any interaction Ophelia had with him. His behaviour was so unnecessarily rude and their interactions were mostly bland.
All the characters also felt more like caricatures and not deep. Ophelia was presented as this quiet girl in comparison to her loud relatives, like her aunt who chaperones Ophelia on the Pole. Especially the women are presented as shallow and nothing more. The characters behaved pretty hostile towards other women as well.

Also, the incest weirded me out which I hadn't really seen mentioned in most reviews I'd seen beforehand.

For the plot, I'd expected compelling political intrigues, but found a lack thereof. The plot moved so slowly that it felt like nothing really impactful had happened when Ophelia stayed at the Pole.

Overall, this book was just a massive disappointment, although it had so much potential.

i haven’t been this excited about the quality of a book in a long time. this was such a fun read that gave me all the feels

One of the best things I’ve read in a long time. I had no idea what was going on the entire time but in the best way possible. Amazing book.

Absolutely slapped. Wow!!! Ophelia is so dynamic, she's so smart and aware even when she's naive. I get her, I like her, even though she's not a self-insert easy character. She's shy, inward-facing, prone to hesitation, ineffectual a lot of the time. She's also clever, talented, empathetic, and developing. Thorn, I really want to like (male lead syndrome?), and I think I will after book 2. I love that I understand the world building superficially, but also the ark-leading quasi-deities are such a mystery and Ophelia's narrow life experience means there's lots of room to play. Really excited for book 2 to become available at the library. (Blazed through this book in 1 day before my loan expired.)

I read the English translation of this book by Hildegarde Serle.

I love fantasy, I love magic and dragons and different worlds.

This was set in such a traditional misogynistic world. It was really disappointing. Our main character, Ophelia, is a small, clumsy woman who keeps being faced with worse and worse.

Her family marries her off to a brusk, rough man mr. Thorne.

After following him there, things just go downhill. Without spoilers, this is one of the bleakest books I have ever read. It's so gloomy. And it has all the horrible implication of a rigid, frigid world where women are nothing more than objects and or pawns.

I can't believe this was super popular and more books were written in this series.

This book was very enjoyable and smooth to read, except for some unfamiliar vocabulary to me such as "Livrea" in the Italian version. Ophelia is a clumsy girl because as a child she was in two places at the same time for a few hours, and she carries this clumsiness into any situation: smashing glasses and plates, tripping, forgetting things, and so on. It happens so many times that the people around her don't even bother to scrape her or be frightened by the pottery breaking. But this seems to be one of the few traits that come out of the protagonist: awkward, ignorant of feelings and love, very distrustful but not to the point of rebelling. Good book but I would not read it again

mid until suddenly not

A Winter’s Promise is a great book for anyone looking for a arranged marriage, enemies to lovers type trope book that has lots of substance to the plot and the world. Ophelia and Thorne enter into an arranged engagement that brings Ophelia out of the sheltered, light academia Anima into the dangerous, cut-throat world of the Pole. There, with the help of her godmother and future aunt-in-law, she has to navigate the delusional court, her ice cold fiancé, and the countless people who want to murder her for their own gain. The first book isn’t the most thrilling, it is a lot of exposition that paves the way for the rest of the series, but it’s a solid read and had some great moments in it. Definite bonus points for originality, there is a lot of really interesting concepts in this series that I’ve never read anywhere else before.

4.5*

This book had a quiet steadiness that allowed you to witness the drama & elaborate setting of the North disguised as a valet.

Che posso dire? Questo libro mi ha stuzzicato, ma il mio umore ha fatto il guastafeste