I’d like to thank M. Lynn for sending me these wonderful books and for writing them. I very much enjoyed reading them.
Customary warning: This is a reminder that these are my personal opinions. My thoughts and feelings are not your thoughts and feelings. I may not always be the target audience for a book; sometimes I am. If I do not like a book, that doesn’t mean you’ll dislike it. If I love a book or simply like a book, you may hate it. Take everything I say with this knowledge. If it sounds interesting to you despite what I’ve said, then go ahead and read it. You’ll only know you like something if you read it yourself.
That being said… Spoilers ahead.
The True Story of Rapunzel by M. Lynn
All Reviews
What I Liked:
Alex; He was the male lead for the series and for what its worth, I sympathized with him. It was obvious that he would become the king, as that is the common occurrence in books such as these. What I wasn’t expecting from his character was the strong hate that he had for magical folk, even though he didn’t actually hate magic. His character arc, pinned on the responsibilities he held, was interesting to me.
Persinette/Etta; For what it’s worth, Etta broke my heart in book two. The way that the curse holds her, and then changes her interested me. As does her love-hate for Alex and her own magic. She pushes Alex away when she no longer feels the tug of the curse for many reasons, and I respect every one. She was the character who pushed the story along, and those who gathered around her were wonderful people. I found her to be a strong female lead.
Vérité; Best character hands down, and he is a horse. I think what is interesting to me in regards to Vérité and Etta’s relationship is that they are soulmates, knowing each other better than another in the series. The amount of attention and time that is spent on this horse gives one the time to love him and his wild nature.
Edmund; Another beautiful character. I am happy he ends up happy after having much of his life absolutely destroyed. He deserves it and the world.
Tyson; My favorite character (not including Vérité). He is spunky, kind, charming, and knows what he wants. In the first book he was a small role, but his importance in book two and book three makes up for the lack of a role in book one. His backstory as Alex’s brother and Etta’s brother (Alex’s mom and Etta’s father) makes for some funny dialogue.
Queen Catrine (Alex’s mom); She is a strong secondary character. I wanted to mention her separately from the other characters because in many ways she can be contrasted with La Dame. In the book La Dame is an evil queen, butQueen Catrine is anything like that. I loved that there was a strong female lead, as a queen, to foil the evil villain. She is strong for her people, well loved, and loved with reason. I am happy that she became Queen of Gaule.
Other Secondary Characters; In general I found the secondary characters to be well developed in their own right. The Council for Alex, and La Dame, were well placed with clear motivations and desires.
Other Tertiary Characters; The tertiary characters were as well developed as tertiary characters can be and I respected that.
World Building within Gaule; The politics, motivations, and culture of the country as a whole, I feel, were well done. Gaule is a horrible place to live, don’t live there (kind of kidding, kind of not). They have their own self righteous attitude and I respected the country’s development.
The Curse; When I was introduced to this curse, I already knew I liked it. Something about being tied to the life of another, unwillingly, is interesting to me. Especially, when the character tries to mitigate the curse. Etta’s connection to Alex, just added a weight and allowed for the insta love to flow relatively well. In general, I approve of the history behind the curse, and the messed up telling of history due to time.
Magic; I am still not a soft magic fan, but I feel that the soft magic was done well within the book (for the most part).
Alex and Etta’s Relationship; I am not a fan of insta love. At all. However I think that with the use of the curse and their history together, this was relatively well done. They had to overcome prejudice from their own side and the responsibilities that lay before them. The way that it worked out and they still loved each other? Sign me up.
What I Would Have Liked or Changed:
World Building outside of Gaule. Dracon, Bela, Cana, Madra? I feel like we got a lot of information on Gaule (granted that makes sense) but little on the rest of the world other than off handed mentions. What are their histories? Why are these other countries even important other than expanding the world and making it more real? I wanted a bit more weight to at least Bela and Dracon, to understand and empathize with them better.
History other than just Bela old kings and queens. What was their country like before? This has to do with above, but I feel that most of Bela’s history stated was the singular King and Queen story that caused the curse, and the fact that Bela has magic (and that Bela and Gaule were enemies). I don’t think I know much else about their culture other than that, and for the magic folk of Gaule, I wonder if it would have been important in any way.
Languages; I was wondering throughout the book if there was separate languages. It is mentioned that Persinette (Bela) = Rapunzel (Dracon), but other than that one reference, it was not clear. I’m not saying that the language needed to be flushed out, but at least having it more referenced as a language barrier would be nice. Additionally having the ancient language of Bela still used by magic folk would be interesting as well.
Changing fonts/font sizes (Book to book); This is a personal note that I saw when reading through the three books. Each one of the three had different font sizes. It wasn’t too distracting, since I read book 1 and then took a break between 2 and 3. However, flipping through it is really obvious and threw me off for book 2 to book 3.
Why You Should Read:
I would recommend this series for a few reasons. One, it is easy to read, not too complicated or long. Two, it is a fun read, with interesting characters and a pretty easy premise to follow. Three, it was well written. Well written books always make easy plots, better reads in my opinion.
Time Taken To Read
4hrs 2min
Rating: 4/5
Marlena Marie 
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