I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Mary Elizabeth Heart is a high school senior by day, but by night she's an intern at the Monarch City police department. She watches with envy from behind a desk as detectives come and go, trying to contain the city's growing crime rate. For years, tension has simmered between the city's wealthy elite, and their plans to gentrify the decaying neighborhood called the Scar - once upon a time the epicenter of all things magic.

When the daughter of one of the city's most powerful businessmen goes missing, Mary Elizabeth is thrilled when the Chief actually puts her on the case. But what begins as one missing person's report soon multiplies, leading her down the rabbit hole of a city in turmoil. There she finds a girl with horns, a boyfriend with secrets, and what seems to be a sea monster lurking in a poison lake. As the mystery circles closer to home, Mary finds herself caught in the fight between those who once had magic, and those who will do anything to bring it back.

Short and Sweet Review

Mary is a high school student by day and by night she’s an intern at the Monarch City police department. When one of Mary’s classmates goes missing the police chief puts Mary on the case. As Mary begins to investigate one disappearance more start to pile up. Mary learns that there’s a big conspiracy going on and a fight between the wealthy and the less fortunate.

Can I just start off by saying that the synopsis is very misleading. “There she finds a girl with horns, a boyfriend with secrets, and what seems to be a sea monster lurking in a poison lake.” These people that Mary finds are people she knows not some random people she stumbles upon. Anyway this book takes Disney characters and puts them into a city and it’s dark and gritty. There’s characters that we know and places that are familiar by name but it felt like everything was a caricature of itself. I personally did not like this book. My biggest problem was Mary, she was self centered, didn’t care about her partner and always went off on her own. She came across as someone who thought she knew everything, and it made it hard to like her. The premise of this book sounded interesting but I think the execution was off. The book is short and I feel like that could have contributed to the lack of world building. I almost forgot to mention Maleficent is the one who goes missing and also Ursula, but this is mainly their villain origin story. There’s a lot of problems I had with this book and I can’t put my finger on what was the most egregious.

Overall, I would usually say I want to see what’s going to happen in the next book but I think this is one series I’m not going forward with. I didn’t like the world or the main character and have no interest in seeing what happens in the next two books