Book Review: Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy #1)

Stolen Songbird
Danielle L Jensen
3/5

Stolen Songbird is about a secret underground troll kingdom, a kingdom desperate to see the sun again. They are so desperate that the King waves his rules about the marriage between humans and trolls to allow his son to marry a human girl as a way to fulfill a prophecy. Cécile is about to be famous, kind of, she's finally old enough for her absent mother to take her to the big city and make her famous. But instead of her going away party, she's kidnapped and sold to the trolls.

Tristan, the crown prince whom she marries, is thankfully not as mean as some authors decide the male protagonists should be. He has already spent many years attempting to quietly organize justice for the half-bloods who live under the ground. The book starts with a lot of him trying to push Cécile away to protect that secret, but the troll bond is special and he feels all of her emotions. It makes it hard to ignore and hate someone when they're always in your head.

I liked the first half of the book a lot more than the second. Towards the end it was just getting so repetitive. I feel like there was some good build-up at the beginning towards their ultimate romance, but then it just hit so fast and it was like ok wow they are just obsessed with each other now I guess. If I had to read Tristan tell her to leave one more time I probably would have lost my mind, like we get it ok you don't think she's safe there stop saying it. Also, her injuries at the end? Another scene where everything just happened so fast and it felt so random, because we barely even saw the villain. That's something we'll probably see more of in the future, but here it just felt like an obligatory way to separate them.

I was also expecting music to be a bigger part of the book? Since that's Cécile's whole claim to fame, she sings like twice I don't know. Again, this is the first book so maybe it's something that will become more important throughout the trilogy. Right now though, wish I had seen more of it.

Not a bad book, I didn't dislike reading it and it had an interesting plot line. There just wasn't enough unique about it to make me want to rate it any higher. The side characters weren't really notable, and I had difficulties supporting Cécile and Tristan at points. It had positive points, interesting points, but I'd like to see more in the next one.