Book Review: Spearwood Academy

Spearwood Academy  Volume 1 (ep. 1-5) by A.S. Oren - ongoing

Spearwood Academy has always been an all-boys school for dragon shapeshifters, until along came Avalon.  The first female student and dragon shapeshifter... in centuries.

First a backstory, I don't normally use reverse harem hashtag when I tweet my blog posts. So I did and stumbled a tweet from A.S. Oren and filed the book under my reading list. Days before this, I was engrossed with Maze Runner Trilogy, not a reverse harem romance story but the set up of the first book is about 50 boys, one girl and one maze. Around the same time, I also received recommendations for two reverse harem English young adult books. I'm such a big fan of YA books. Between reverse harem and non-reverse harem Hollywood TV series, animes and Asian dramas, I also alternately read YA fantasy and YA dystopia genres. This sudden turn of related events was making me excited and I about to post a generic post about YA reverse harem when I received a message from the author right after I followed her. She's giving me a free copy for a review!

This is the first time I get to read something in exchange for a review. I was worried what if I don't like it at all. I'm not sure how to handle it. I started reading the book and find the background story intriguing. Then the heroine was introduced and I was suddenly caught off guard with the burst of emotions. In teenage speak..the feels! It was laid down at the start that Avalon is a big fan of Harry Potter so there's a lot of parallelisms and references. It got me at Ravenclaw remark. But as the world of the dragon shapeshifters is revealed, it is grand, meticulously detailed and magical on it's own right. I can see this as a TV series. Even thought it is being marketed as reverse harem, the storytelling doesn't feel like a hard sell. I'm mesmerized with the the fantasy elements and every now and then I forget that it has reverse harem factors that remembering about is like an awesome perk. This is also the first time I get to try to imagine this many guys in real life. Bishonen stereotyping is a must in a reverse harem and I enjoyed trying to guess which character fits the bill. But still I was surprised with how one of the characters fared and I was like how could I have missed the signs! There's so many possibilities of who she might end up with and I'm really excited on where it will go. I also liked that Avalon's personality is strong but at the same time not immune to the charms of hot boys. 

Sorry for the long backstory earlier. As I mentioned, it was supposed to be a separate entry. But bottomline is I'm absolutely thrilled that my love for reverse harem and young adult has intertwined. I hope, no, I predict that this will be the next trend in both genres.