Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This was a very quick dnf – I chose to mark it as dnf at four percent… that’s a very quick choice. I didn’t realise this was a spin-off sequel/prequel series to the original Trylle trilogy. It wasn’t really marketed properly.

I’ve only read the first book like years ago, I can’t remember if I liked it or not. The very very little I read of this didn’t really impress me much?

The formatting was a bit off as well. Several times if a book started with the letters f and i (five, first etc) it would disappear. So it wouldn’t say five but ve, not first but rst. I was able to get what the sentence was, but it kept taking me out of the story, which also led to me wanting to dnf.

Can she unlock the secrets of her past?

Amanda Hocking's Trylle series was one of my favourites as a teen. I devoured those books and fell in love with the writing style. However, despite the slow pace of this book, I still enjoyed it! The fantasy aspect was definitely more solid than her previous works and I couldn't help but relate to the characters!

This book is set in the same world as the author's previous works, however as I have not read these, I can't comment on how they fit together as a set.
This book focuses on Ulla, a young troll who was abandoned as a baby and moves to the city to search for her birth family. The characters were likeable and the relationships they build felt genuine, the romance was light and easy which is nice to see in a YA novel. There was an element of mystery which I was interested in, but ultimately it felt like the search for her parents fell by the wayside - although perhaps this will be rectified in later books.
I enjoyed the urban fantasy element of this book, however I felt that a lot of the story was a recount of Ulla's day to day life, and there wasn't a lot of forward drive with the plot.
When the big dramatic ending did come, it felt somewhat rushed and was over quickly, leaving us with a very abrupt cliffhanger ending.
Overall it was a good, easy read, but not a series I'll be rushing back to.

I have never read a book about trolls and it really surprised me. I was hooked and when I got to the end of the book it seemed that the story was just beginning! I can't wait to read the next book and see where Ulla goes! PS I hope she gets with Pan!!

I’m going to start this review with a confession: this is the first Amanda Hocking book I have read so I entered this book with no knowledge or love for the Trylle universe. I say this as maybe this is why I didn’t really feel anything for this book. I didn’t hate it, it just kinda went nowhere for me.
The whole book is about Ulla reading through scrolls to find out more about her mother who abandoned her, and finding out Eliana is, a mysterious girl who just turns up, and I didn’t particularly care for either character. Pan was more likeable but just felt like a token smitten eyed love interest to follow, Dagny was the most interesting but we learn nothing about her, she just has dialogue.

My underwhelmed review feels a bit unfair as this is a pre-established universe, although it is book 1 in a new trilogy, and it wasn’t that I was lost when it came to the universe, I just didn’t feel like I was made to care about it. If you already care, this might be different.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this.

My initial excitement for this release has completely died down, unfortunately. I thought this was going to be the start of a new great ya series in the Trylle world, but it ended up really letting me down. I don’t know if it’s because I read the first two series so long ago as a teen, but I still remember really loving them and being surprised by how immersive they were. This book completely swerves away from these good aspects.

First of all, is this even a real fantasy? Most of the time it was only a description of Ulla’s day to day life as she did her internship in the city. She’s supposed to be looking for her mom, but that kind of fell in the back-burner in the end. The book, in my perspective, is pretty “mundane”. It’s a whole bunch of nothing, honestly. Where is the excitement? Where is the intrigue of the fantasy world? The writing style flows really well, but I was so bored I couldn’t wait for it to end. The frustration led me to skim after the first 60% because I just couldn’t do it anymore, and I discovered the action is in the last 5%-10% of the book lol. What a waste of my time.

Characters are easy to distinguish between one another but they’re flat when you really look at what they actually add to the story. This is especially true for Ulla. I remember Brin and Wendy and they were anything but bland. They propelled the story forward, Ulla just lets things happened to her. For a main character that is really sad, I wasn’t able to root for her for a single second.
I also found Eliana and Hanna to be super irritating. Eliana was weird and I didn’t like her at all. And since the book is about her you can see how my relationship with this book was doomed from the start.

I think I need to reread at least one of the previous series to see if it’s a me problem or if it’s just that this book was badly plotted. So far it’s a very sad 2 stars for me, sigh.

Another Tyrlle series from Amanda Hocking. I have read the original trilogy and enjoyed it. Although I was sceptical as I have also read her other work and found it lacking. However this story takes you back to the and my like for Hocking's books redeemed. It follows the story of Ulla who is abandoned and hidden away (because she is a half blood troll) She never stops wondering about the parents who left her. A fun fantasy YA novel. A great cliffhanger that made me want to read the next, this is something I think Amanda Hocking has alway done well. The heroine of the story is Likeable and relatable and I enjoyed finding out more about her.

A great universe and a fantastic story.

I loved this book, it's characters while fairly simple are likeable and Ulla is a fantastic protagonist. While the majority doesn't have a huge amount of action, it's still a gripping read as I just wanted to hear more and more about the world of the trolls. The premise is interesting, and I was so disappointed when the story ended - I will definitely be picking up the sequel!

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was the first book by Amanda Hocking that I have read. It was a Y.A. story full of fun and adventure and just enough romance to not be too much. The world building was quite well developed and I would very much like to get lost in all the different troll kingdoms again. I will most likely read the rest of this series as well as more from this author.

I had to DNF this book. Not because the story seemed bad but because the ARC was riddled with translation errors and missing letters, making it very hard to read.

Issues with my arc and can’t read this, now archived sorry, unfortunately unable to review this due to that.

I loved the original Trylle series (I have physical and Kindle copies of each book), and it is one of my go-to recommendations for my younger students, aged 12-15.
The Lost City was a good read, and I enjoyed following Ulla's story - I will definitely be recommending it. However, I didn't get into it as much as I thought I would, considering my love for the original trilogy, but that might have more to do with being 10 years older and a busier schedule.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for this ARC.

Unfortunately, I was slow in downloading this story and it was archived before I had the chance. I'm sure it is a wonderful read.

I honestly dont know how to rate this one. I love Amanda Hocking and I love the world she has built starting with the Trylle series. I loved the Trylle Trilogy and the Kanin Chronicles and gave both of these 5 stars.

I was so happy to be returning to this world and Ulla was a character I was really glad to spend more time with. Now my problem with The Lost City was pacing, I felt like not alot happened plot wise. We got to spend time with the characters and they were quite fleshed out and I really did enjoy them. Now maybe this is my problem as the previous 2 trilogies I read in a bind up although I still felt that plot wise they kept you constantly wanting to read more.

I will be carrying on as like i said I love the world and I want to find out what happens next. Hopefully this was just a book of slow buildup and all the plot action starts in the next one.

I still would recommend this book if you have enjoyed the previous trilogies. I just can't rate this high on its own. Perhaps if the pay off is great in the next book I will up my rating.

I loved the premise of the book, however the execution fell a bit flat. I wish it was backed up with more world building.
Also, it was a bit difficult to get into.

Thanks a lot to the publisher and NG for this copy.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but I just didn't connect with it unfortunately.

I found there to be a lot of 'telling' rather than 'showing', and I found it difficult to connect and empathise with characters because they were pretty flat.

I felt like I was missing a lot of information whilst reading this, even though there was a considerable amount of info-dumping throughout.

I'll be honest, I haven't read any Amanda Hocking books in a while, but I remember reading the Trylle series just after it had concluded from my school library and really liking it. It was a lot of fun.

I didn't try her other YA series because I wanted more troll content and if it wasn't troll content, I didn't want to have it. So, when the Kannin books came out, I bought them for my sister and she enjoyed them. I never got around to reading them, but when I saw this available on NetGalley, I thought this is the perfect moment to get back into Amanda Hocking and the world of the troll tribes.

...I've gotta say, I don't really know what happened.

It opened promising, but something about the writing style bugged me. It felt overly descriptive, especially for first person and I kept getting caught up in repetition or unnecessarily long descriptions of people.

I kept having to take breaks and it was an effort to push myself back into reading because I'd get annoyed and then get a headache and honestly, this just wasn't for me.

And I'm disappointed.

I wanted to like this book, I wanted to finish it and then pop right onto the next because it's also available for request, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I feel a little guilty writing a review of a book I didn't finish, but there's no point in writing a scathing review at the end of something I hated when there wasn't really anything wrong with the story itself.

Just the writing of it.

This was an interesting spin off and it was nice to see some familiar characters make an appearance.
It was however its own separate story which was fresh and original and it kept my attention throughout.
One thing that stood out for me was the character of Dangy and it was nice to see some Ace rep within the book and I hope it is explored more slightly? Who knows.

The only thing that was hard about the book was that there was a technical error where parts of words were missing which made it quite hard to read at times

“Intentions are the lies we tell ourselves. Actions are the truth.”

The Trylle Trilogy were some of the first ebooks I ever bought and read years ago. When I saw this was a spin-off series, I immediately wanted to read it. I was worried I should have reread the original books beforehand, however, the story works as a stand-alone.

The plot follows Ulla, a troll of mixed blood (TOMB) who is abandoned as a baby in the arctic village of Iskyla and raised by an elderly couple. At fourteen, she leaves and spends her teens as a nanny. After deciding that she wants to learn more about her family, Ulla gains an Internship at Merellä.

Ulla was a great main character. She was strong, compassionate and extremely likeable. The fact that she was 6ft and slightly overweight was really refreshing in a YA fantasy novel. Pan, Dagny, Hanna and Eliana were all endearing characters, and their personalities were all different and well-developed.

However, the book felt more like a prequel than the opening of a trilogy. Having “The Lost City” as the title made me think that at some point, the characters would begin some quest to find this place. This felt more like an introduction or a novella, with not much excitement and some chapters being rather slow.

Overall, I did enjoy it as it set the scene and refreshed my memory of trolls and the different tribes. I look forward to completing the series and finding out more about Ulla’s heritage and Eliana’s past.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.