The Crowns of Croswald published by Stories Untold Press on 21 Jul 2017
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For sixteen years Ivy Lovely has been hidden behind an enchanted boundary that separates the mundane from the magical. When Ivy crosses the border, her powers awaken. Curiosity leads her crashing through a series of adventures at the Halls of Ivy, a school where students learn to master their magical blood and the power of Croswald’s mysterious gems. When Ivy’s magic––and her life––is threatened by the Dark Queen, she scrambles to unearth her history and save Croswald before the truth is swept away forever.
The Girl with the Whispering Shadow published by Stories Untold Press on 23 Jan 2019
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Ivy Lovely is whisked away from her beloved school to Belzebuthe, a secret town for only those with magical blood. She sets out on a mission to uncover the second facet of the Kindred Stone while eluding the Dark Queen’s wrath. But even when she’s supposed to be safe, something is shadowing Ivy. She will need all her natural-born magic and more as she battles to find the rest of the Kindred Stone and return to the Halls of Ivy. Before it’s too late...
More strangeness, she mused. She was getting used to everything being odd, all the time.
I know we're all tired of comparing every fantasy to Harry Potter, but you can think of the Halls of Ivy in The Crowns of Croswald as Hogwarts and Belzebuthe in The Girl with the Whispering Shadow as Hogsmeade. If you're looking for another fantasy series with a magical boarding school and a magical town, this could be one for you.
The most wondrous things, the most impossible of things, are often just ordinary things doing what they are best at.
Croswald is pretty much the middle grade parallel to Harry Potter. There's great world-building in Croswald--a world complete with its own magical terminology too, like "scrivenist," "slurry," "scaldron," and more!--but the concepts are nothing new. Instead of wizards, they have scrivenists. Instead of wands, they use quills. The orphaned protagonist is actually the chosen one (spoiler, but you saw it coming. I mean, the school is named after her).
I personally always look for something different in my next read, especially with fantasy, but if you're looking for something similar to Harry Potter, I would recommend this. It's well-written and fast-paced. It's a middle grade series, so the plot is a bit simplistic, but it's still great fun to immerse yourself in a new magical world.
