Review: Banish My Heart

Banish My Heart by Jennifer Youngblood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis:

From bestselling authors Youngblood and Poole, comes a clean romance series that's captivating and magical. 

**NOTE** This book is the revised edition of the first half of the original title Banished published in 2015 by Youngblood and Poole. 

Fans of the hit TV series Once Upon a Time will love this Cinderella Story where the real world and fairy tale world collide when a fair-haired prince falls in love with a peasant girl. 

An accident puts Elle Worthington into a coma. When she awakes, she can’t remember her name or anything about her life. She leaves the hospital and returns to a home that’s anything but ideal—her stepmother loathes her, her stepsister resents her, and her father’s a workaholic who’s rarely ever home. 

She soon discovers she led a charmed life before the accident where she was dating Edward Kingsley, the golden-boy quarterback. Everyone tells her how lucky she is to be with Edward, but for some strange reason, Elle is instead drawn to Rush Porter, her next-door neighbor—a brooding, reckless newcomer who’s too good looking for his own good! From the moment she sees him, he captures her attention and haunts her dreams, and he seems to know an awful lot about her. 

When Elle goes to work for her eccentric aunt Adele who owns a chocolate shop, she begins to get a glimpse of another life—a magical life in which she was a simple peasant girl whose life changed forever the day she caught the eye of the prince. A girl who might have lived happily ever after had her heart not had other ideas. She becomes trapped between loyalty and duty—betrayal and love, and a forbidden attraction so strong that it has the power to destroy her. 

All is not as it seems on the surface. Dark forces are watching and waiting to claim what they deem to be theirs, and the fate of a kingdom rests in the hands of a girl who cannot remember who she is or where she came from. 

Includes bonus chapters of: 
The Magic in Me (Book 2 of The Grimm Laws Series) by Jennifer Youngblood & Sandra Poole 
The Neighbor's Secret (A Secret Billionaire Romance) by Kimberley Montpetit 
Rescue My Heart by Taylor Hart 

My Thoughts:

Cover: The cover on this book is absolutely beautiful. It definitely captures the eyes.

Title: So far, the title doesn't fit the story. Well, I guess it could if it was a complete story.

Characters: Well, I feel bad for Elle because everyone keeps telling her how awful she was before the accident. Way to help the girl who can't even remember who she is! I like Rae since she tries to help Elle out and steer her in the right direction. It is hard to like the characters since you are going back and forth between 2 worlds, I guess. You don't really get to know them.

Plot: The plot is somewhat convoluted and messy. The author goes back and forth between Cinderella's story and Elle's. Almost like it was a past life and all of them were part of it.

Overall: It was an ok story that could have been better if it wasn't told from so many different perspectives from both lives/worlds. It ended up being hard to follow and then it ends abruptly. I was shocked it just ended with no conclusion at all. Which guy is she gonna choose? No idea since the book ended without wrapping anything up. When I went online to look, I found out that the author took a previous book and cut it in half. She then rewrote that half and this is what is left. Seriously, authors need to stop thinking it will make people buy the next book. I certainly won't pay for half a book and I am glad this one was free.

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