Book Review: ‘The River She Became’ Follows a Typical YA Fantasy Blueprint, Complete with a White-Haired Fae Prince. Is it Worth Reading?
I was told this book had The Mummy vibes, and I was so excited because it’s one of my favorite cult classics. However, I failed to see how The River She Became by Emily Varga was like it in any way, other than the main character being a scholar and having curly hair and glasses like Evie. Not enough. This is very much a run-of-the-mill YA Romantasy with Fae courts and convenient magic. Given that I loved Varga’s debut novel, For She is Wrath, I was hoping for something more from this sophomore offering. There are strong themes of colonization and oppression that are addressed, which I think was handled well, but somehow this felt very instalove-y, and the worldbuilding felt light. The FMC’s magic was extremely convenient, turning into whatever they needed at the time with zero explanation of how she got it or how it worked. Maybe this will be addressed more in book two, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the loosey goosey magic system. I also felt like the main villain, although horrific, was a little over the top, and one dimensional. I was hoping for a bit more complexity than megalomaniac, ya know? There’s also quite a bit of swearing, which I wasn’t expecting from a YA book. So there was a slight incongruent feel to the way the characters spoke and how immature they acted sometimes. I will say, I really appreciated there was no age gap in the romance. The fae prince is only a year older than her. Refreshing. My other issue was the editing. It needed another round of edits. There were many times where a sentence was repeated almost verbatim a paragraph or page later. Overall, it fell a bit short for me, but I do think there will be younger readers who may enjoy it more.
Things to Know:
YA Romantasy
Fae courts
POC characters
Depictions of colonization
TW: torture
***SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW***
Yaseema is a young scholar forced to work for an oppressive government stealing artifacts that magically feed her land. So the people are starving, her father’s dead, and her mom has disappeared ‘across the river’. She decides the only thing she can do is follow her and try to bring down a magical wall that could restore magic to her kingdom (still not super clear how that would work). And considering the River Court on the other side is going through something similar with a horrible tyrant, I’m not sure it’s the best idea to bring down a wall, right? But what do I know?
She has magic that can basically find anything she wants to search for. However, her magic also seems to do whatever she needs it to do in that particular moment. Unlock a door? Sure. Heal someone? Yep. It just felt a bit too convenient without any explanation (although a teensy bit is revealed at the end). There’s also no explanation as to how she has magic at all as a human.
Kiyan is your typical brooding 7’ tall white-haired fae princeling…sound familiar? Yeah, there wasn’t anything new about his type of character, but I did like him. I mean, what’s not to like?! I do feel like the romance wasn’t really developed. They’re trying to find a crown, don’t trust each other, and then suddenly, “ahhh I love you.” It was a little fast.
I have a few other thoughts, but they’d be major spoilers, so I’ll keep them to myself for now. Will I continue with book two? Maybe. This was still an ok read, and I definitely think a younger audience will enjoy it.
As you all know, I’m a huge proponent of immersive reading, and I did read my physical copy with the audiobook. If you’re an audiobook reader or you want to try immersive reading out, you can find the audiobook on Audible or Libro.fm (ProTips: Audible is 99 cents/mo for three months (3 books for $2.97) right now AND you can get two free audiobooks on Libro.fm with the code SWITCH right now).
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