Title: Chances and Destinies

Author: Sophie----Everdeen

Genre: "Historical Fiction"

Quick Summary: There must be more than this provincial life...

Thoughts:

The prose is clear for the most part, but there are a lot of logistical and technical issues that affect this work. 

Chapter 1.5 can be removed. Whether that means adding it to chapter 1 or removing it entirely, I don't know, but it doesn't need to be its own chapter, honestly. Same with chapter 6 - it can be added to chapter 5 because honestly splitting it into its own chapter feels like it was done to try to draw out suspense, which it did not do well.

Sometimes in dialogue, the actions are put in parenthesis. I've... never seen it done before this book and honestly it's distracting. There are better ways to have action and dialogue intertwined... not like this. Also, at times, these parentheticals feel like subtle author's notes, which I do not appreciate. They're just... not needed almost every single time they're used in the text presented. 

This is not historical fiction. I don't know what time period this is in [1800's?] and I only have a vague idea of where this is and aside from that, it's not historically accurate in the slightest. The biggest insult to the time is the sheer ignorance of classism and how people were "divided" in whatever time this is, which is bad because this entire plot hinges on me believing that a literal princess would want anything to do with a commoner/villager/peasant. The sad fact of the matter is regardless of Elsa's own personal feelings, if she cared at all for her reputation, she would not be interacting as closely with a peasant girl as she is in text. And even if she didn't care, I can assure you her father would and would take every measure necessary to keep his daughter's reputation intact. Classism was a hell of a thing. It still is, to be honest. In fact, it was such a hell of a thing that the rich and powerful dropped anything and everything once it was considered popular with the "commonfolk".

Not to mention, Historical Fiction is: "An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the period depicted."

Which... this story is not doing. There's a brief "My Fair Lady" vibe as Elsa tries to teach Lily how to act like a royal person, but that fizzles out rather quickly and we're left with a plot that I can't buy at all because of what it hinges on. Not to mention, even with a lack of a sense of time, I highly doubt Lily and Elsa would be wearing the sort of dresses the author suggests they do during the ball... That sort of style didn't come around until... probably the 1950's?

Also, I had to read Lily's mother's death three times over before I could begin to understand what happened, and some of the details are still foggy to me even after the scene where Lily visits her father in the... dungeons?

In terms of characters, I don't have much of a strong opinion on them... except Reagan and Nicholas.

-Reagan doesn't understand what boundaries are, so I have incredible distate for him. 

-Nicholas... I don't think I like him. Not to mention he "falls in love" with Lily in an hour. They said brief greetings and shook hands [not something that was done, BTW, especially between men and women] and he's "in love"?? And then later he muses that meeting her had made him do a complete 180 on his thought process... that is not how that works. And then he has someone beat the shit out of her dad. Was the point of that scene to make me hate him? I'm very nervous for him and how possessive he seems to be of Lily - I feel like if they had a relationship, he would wind up incredibly abusive. 

Everyone else I feel "meh" about and this is a bad thing. The jumping from person to person in terms of "POV" did not help matters, either. 

This either needs to be moved from Historical Fiction to some other genre, or it needs to be treated with the nuance and accuracy that the genre deserves and requires. Every character needs a bit more fleshing out and the POV needs to decide what it is. Limited or Omniscient? Please decide.