A Book Review of Deva Fagan’s ‘Nightingale’

Hello, everyone! Isabelle Knight here again with another middle-grade book review! The book I will be reviewing today is a fantabulous, adventurous, wondrous middle-grade fantasy that I picked up with Kindle Unlimited, and I think it’s absolutely WONDERFUL!!

And now… the book I will be reviewing today is…

Nightingale by Deva Fagan!

As I’ve said, I read this with Kindle Unlimited, and I think it is a fantastic book, perfect for kids, and full of adventure, fantasy, and friendship!! I even remember reading this at the dinner table and I was at the climax, and every two pages, I’d be going, “NO!” and my mom and dad gave me weird looks. XD Oh well! There was also a particular point where I shouted, “I KNEW he was evil!” So… yeah! A really adventurous story!

Nightingale is about a twelve-year-old girl named Lark. She’s a thief, an orphan, and she lives at a horrible boarding house and longs to get away from the simply awful Miss Starvenger, who runs the boarding house. And so, she comes up with a grand scheme to steal her fortune from the Royal Museum. But her heist doesn’t go quite as planned, and she ends up stealing a magical sword from Prince Jasper. She soon discovers that the magical sword has a mind of its own, and it’s chosen her to be the new Nightingale, a fabled, legendary hero who has to defeat an ancient evil. And so, Lark must embark on a series of perilous adventures and, with the help of her boarding house roommates and Prince Jasper, defeat that evil!!

I absolutely love this book! It’s full of heart and friendship and lots of magic!! The characters were oh-so fun, especially the Sword, and I feel like all the worldbuilding in this book was pure magic! It was so rich and detailed, and it felt like it was a whole other world itself, which is always a good thing! It dragged me straight out of the dinner table and right into the story!!

The characters here are, as I’ve said, so much fun! They all have their really vivid personalities, and you can really tell who is who, especially Sophie! Deva Fagan does a brilliant job of making you care for the characters, scream, “NOO!” when they’re in danger, and making you hate the awful characters (like Miss Starvenger)! My favorite characters in this book were undoubtedly Lark, Sophie, and of course, the Sword!!! Some might say a sword doesn’t count as a character, but the Sword has such a mind of its own and is so alive that to me, it is definitely a character! Like Vajra, from Aru Shah (another awesome book you guys have to read!!) All the relationships between the characters were so well-written too! The friendships were so fun and hilarious, and it really makes you root for them every step of the way!

The plot was so adventurous!! I feel like the characters really grow along with the plot, and that everything that happened was just really magical, adventurous, dramatic, and revealed some hidden secret bit by bit!! The plot twists were amazing too, and not way out of the blue like some others I could mention! My favorite part of the book… Oof, this is a really hard question since the whole adventure is just so fantastic, but I guess my favorite part of the book is when Lark gets her sort of costume from Prince Jasper. Fine, I’ll admit, the costume is cool, but what I loved most about it was that it appeared that Lark was finally starting to believe in herself, which was really heartwarming!!! I also loved the climax! It felt like it was really the part of the story that the book had been building up to for so long, and it did not disappoint!!! It was so dramatic, adventurous, and was totally the part where I was half-shouting, “NO!” And there are also so many other scenes I love (like the scene where Lark takes the other girls to a sort of place where you get fizzy drinks) that I simply could not list them all.

Another thing I like about this book is that it kinda feels both character and plot driven. I’ve read some stories that are just character-driven (LOVE character driven stories!!) and some that are just plot-driven, and I definitely do prefer the character-driven ones better. But I feel like this book was absolutely perfect in both cases!!! I’d say it’s a mix of character-driven and plot-driven because on one hand, you have the unwilling hero (or I guess I should say, heroine), who is learning and growing gradually throughout the book and who you really feel for, and there’s also a bunch of exciting, adventurous stuff happening at the same time!

So, yeah! Overall, I loved this book so much, and I think it is a fantastic middle-grade fantasy that everyone should read! Kids of all ages will love it, and I think this is the kind of middle-grade fantasy book that kids would love to read before bed!! I highly recommend it to lovers of middle-grade fantasy, parents and kids alike, and to fans of Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend, The Dragon Warrior by Katie Zhao, and The Lucky Diamond Trilogy by Valinora Troy!

Anyway, I guess that wraps up this book review! Thank you guys so much for coming, and I’ll see you again in the next post!!! Also, don’t forget to check out Marvelous Middle Grade Monday here, where you will find even more middle-grade book reviews from fantastic people!!!!! Farewell for now!

Isabelle