All the Stars and Teeth (All the Stars and Teeth Duology, 1)

Excruciating to read. Made it 57 pages in and I had to stop because it wasn’t getting better. Might be better for a pre-teen, I am a grown woman and thought the description sounded amazing, but it sucked.But the story just drags on and on and the writing is sort of terrible.Borrow this from a library. Save your cash.

(Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)I loved that All the Stars and Teeth promised me pirates, epic quests, and mermaids and delivered ALL of that. I will not get over how much I enjoyed the world building of All the Stars and Teeth. Take me there please and protect me! I'm not going to lie, for the beginning I was like, "Where are the mermaids?" because you can't promise a girl mermaids and not deliver. But when the mermaids were proven not to be a lie, I could relax and dive deeper into All the Stars and Teeth. The world building is spectacular. Not only are there myths within this story, but also monstrous creatures and curses. While I still have a few outlying questions about the history of this world, I was pleased with the attention to detail and sheer epic scale of the world.The characters in All the Stars and Teeth were fantastic. Amora has the spirit of adventure thrumming in her blood. Even though she's deeply committed to being queen, there's a part of her that yearns to be on the open seas. To be having adventures and discovering new places. And who can blame her? I knew I was going to love Bastian because I have a soft spot for pirates. It's something about their ability to sail a ship, their rugged sea salt nurtured locks, and their smolder. But I think my favorite character has to be the mermaid. She wasn't the sanitized flowing locks and seashell type. My favorite mermaids have fangs. They lure men in with their songs to drown them. Give me the mermaids with weapons in their hands, gorgeous hair, and blood in their teeth. And the mermaid is queer!

Adalyn Grace brings us a debut filled with swashbuckling pirates, mermaids, magic galore in a sweeping tale that will leave you spellbound. All the Stars and Teeth was a magical story that kept me thoroughly enchanted throughout and I cannot wait to see what Adalyn will bring us in the next installment.Amora is the daughter of the king of the island of Visidia and she is getting ready to take her "test" that will prove her the worthy heir. But when things don't quite go as planned, Amora finds herself locked in a prison cell for failing her test. It's there a mysterious man named Bastian finds hers and offers her her freedom...if she will help him out. Not knowing was fate her father might have planned for her, she takes the offer. Only to find out that Bastian is a cursed pirate who wants her help in freeing the people of Zudoh from a terrible curse. Zudoh was another island of the kingdom who were banished long ago.It's as they're about to set off on Bastian's ship when Amora's intended fiancee, Ferrick, comes aboard in a grand gesture to rescue her, but ends up tagging along on this quest to save the Zudoh kingdom. Then the trio basically flails about the seas and islands trying to ready themselves for the trip to Zudoh. Among these miniature quests is finding a mermaid! Yes, we finally get to the mermaids!! And the one they find is a doozie by the name of Vataea. She was a riot! I loved her spunk.I will admit, that the pacing to this one was a little off. Or maybe it was just me. I was expecting a harrowing trip across the seas and battling sea monsters and maybe evil mermaids, but that didn't happen. Well...not quite, I should say, but that's all I will say about that! Lol. There was definitely some excitement going on in here, but I guess it just wasn't all what I was expecting. It's hard sometimes to adjust your expectations once you realize that they won't be met in quite the way you hoped.There certainly were some twists to the story of this one! Just when you think you've gotten a plotline figured out, things will shift dramatically! It was fun in a sense, because you never really knew what to expect.There was a bit of romance going on in this one as well. As you might guess, with a pirate as the male lead, Amora will gravitate towards him more than Ferrick. She actually does make it clear to the reader and to Ferrick that their engagement was never one out of love of feelings, so be at ease folks, there's no love triangle here. If anything, I thought that Ferrick might possibly have true feelings for another...though it was never made clear if this was true or not. It's just an inkling I had from a moment or two. I guess we'll have to wait for the next installment to find out!Things picked up quickly towards the end. They weren't quite rushed, but it seemed to jump more quickly to X-Y-Z! I had anticipated a bit more of a cliffhanger to be honest. With the way things were going, I didn't think it would be possible to wrap things up as quickly as they were, but I will say that Adalyn does it in a way that doesn't leave you feeling wanting...that is to say beyond the usual wanting of the next installment! Lol.All the Stars and Teeth may not have been the read I was anticipating, but it still by far surpassed my expectations of a story filled with pirates, mermaids, and magic! The added romance and action packed fight scenes were just the added icing on the cake! I cannot wait to read more from Adalyn Grace!Overall Rating 4/5 stars

‘All the Stars and Teeth’ by Adalyn Grace is the first in a Teen/YA duology that I feel will also appeal to readers of fantasy of all ages, especially if they love sea monsters, pirates, and mermaids.Its young protagonist is Amora Montara, princess of the island kingdom of Visidia. She has spent her entire life training to become High Animancer - the master of souls. Everyone in the realm is free to choose the type of magic they will practice, apart from Amora. In order to secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove that she has mastered the dangerous soul magic that is restricted to the royal family.Naturally things don’t go to plan and Amora is forced to flee Visidia. She makes a deal with Bastian, a dashing pirate. He will assist her in proving her fitness to rule and in return she’ll help him reclaim his stolen magic.They are accompanied on the voyage by Ferrick, Amora’s betrothed. Grace neatly avoids the YA love triangle trope as it’s an arranged marriage between Ferrick and Amora. She considers him a childhood acquaintance rather than a suitor.They have many adventures during their quest including encounters with a mermaid and a kraken-like monster! Great fun. Aside from this, I was fascinated by the magical system, even though aspects of Amora’s magic were rather a bit gory.Overall, I found this an entertaining fantasy adventure with an engaging group of characters. I look forward to reading the conclusion when it becomes available.4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I started it 3 times before I finally read it all and I think the reason for struggling so much are the character’s depth and personalities. The story itself is a great idea and well thought out. The male characters are good, likeable but are missing an element that would make you really care about them, but the main issue is Amora, the main character. In style and genre this book would be directly comparable to Sarah J Maas Throne of Glass series but if you look at the Throne female characters, they are so fantastic. There are 4 main female characters in Sarah’s book and they are all flawed but you love and care about each of them deeply. In this book Amora is in my opinion quite unlikeable. Only in the very last couple of chapters did she redeem herself. There are also some major story flaws, Bastion says he will kill (someone) when he gets the chance, and yet he has the perfect chance, a knife to the throat even and yet he doesn’t kill him?! Why? It’s silly... again if this was Aelin in Throne she would have slit that throat without a second thought :] It’s such a shame because the story is there, I just didn’t care a jot about the main character. One character I did care about was the mermaid, but she simply wasn’t given enough story time, another shame. Also the Soul magic doesn’t work for me, at the beginning it shows how she can easily take lives with it, she tells how she has taken ‘hundreds of lives’ and yet when in difficult spots with villains she only manages to do some slight damage, enough to make them scream so she can run away. It didn’t make sense.

The world buoldijg in a lot of books I'd either terrible or goes on forever, but in this book it was actually so much fun to read the descriptions and about the outer people. It really helped to set the scene.However, the depth in the actual characters and plot was very surface level. It's sorta like if this was a really well written shipping of the character archetypes so we're meant to use our knowledge of these character tropes to fill in blank spaces in their personalities and the development of their romantic development

Amazing book, great characters and even better storyline. Great for anyone one lives fantasy novels. Loving the magic, pirates and mermaids

Loved it