The Court of Miracles (A Court of Miracles #1)

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My Opinion

(3.5 / 5) This is a hard book to rate. On one hand it is beautiful. It’s a retelling of Les Mis, and for that alone, I adore it. Getting to know Gavroche and Cosette and Eponine again was amazing. Seeing them in a different light was incredible. I loved the similarities that I could find and see how it was lining up with the original story.

But it wasn’t all good. The writing is hard. It’s beautiful at times but difficult at others and it took almost half the book before I fully understood what was going on. The ages of the main characters were very difficult to discern and I found it jumping months or years when I wasn’t aware, which just added to the confusion. There were many, many characters. The ones I could connect with the original story I felt I could keep track of better, but some I had a hard time remembering and what group they stood with.

I wanted to love this book. There were definitely parts I did love but for the most part, it was just difficult to read and follow.

Thank you to Random House Children’s, Knopf Children’s and NetGalley for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book comes out June 2, 2020.

The Court of Miracles (A Court of Miracles #1)

Kester Grant

Les Misérables meets Six of Crows in this page-turning adventure as a young thief finds herself going head to head with leaders of Paris’s criminal underground in the wake of the French Revolution.

In the violent urban jungle of an alternate 1828 Paris, the French Revolution has failed and the city is divided between merciless royalty and nine underworld criminal guilds, known as the Court of Miracles. Eponine (Nina) Thénardier is a talented cat burglar and member of the Thieves Guild. Nina’s life is midnight robberies, avoiding her father’s fists, and watching over her naïve adopted sister, Cosette (Ettie). When Ettie attracts the eye of the Tiger–the ruthless lord of the Guild of Flesh–Nina is caught in a desperate race to keep the younger girl safe. Her vow takes her from the city’s dark underbelly to the glittering court of Louis XVII. And it also forces Nina to make a terrible choice–protect Ettie and set off a brutal war between the guilds, or forever lose her sister to the Tiger.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings. 

Detailed Content Review

Language 

F***-

H***- 2

S***-

A**-

B****-

D***- 6

Bas****-

Religious Cursing-

J****-

Chr***-

G**-

L***-

Derogatory terms etc-

Rennart’s balls!

Ysengrim be d—-

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

A father is passed out, drunk. 

A man sips wine.

A man is passed out, drunk, as is a woman. Both drinks have been laced with poppy to ensure they would fall asleep.

A woman’s room has 2 empty syringes she’s used for drugs. People have forced poppy into her veins regularly. 

Two men wobble, drunk. 

At an inn, people are drinking wine and beer and smoking poppy.

Wine is served at a party. It is given to young kids and teens too. 

A man says he drinks spirits to avoid poison in the water.

Alcohol is served at a ball. Two young teens take champagne.

A man poisons the city wells.. People die. More put a sickness in the water to limit the population cause of famine. Then poison (unknown to them)  is given to them to give to their children.

Wine is passed around at a celebration to adults and children. A young girl is drugged to sleep.

A group of men have been drinking for two days.

Men drink and smoke around a table. 

A young woman drinks champagne.

Large amounts of poppy is burned and blown into the air to slow people down. 

Many women are drugged on poppy and stand in a man’s room with blank eyes. One is shooting up with a needle. 

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty 

“No dresses anymore. Do not let men look at you with desire.”

A young girl kisses a young boy. 

A man wants to buy a 12yo girl. 

A young woman kisses a young man.

Two women are drugged and naked in a man’s room. 

A young man kisses a young woman. 

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

A young girl’s father is a thief and steals things from bread to jewels. He teaches his young daughter to do it also. 

There are 6 heads impaled on spikes. They are treated so as to not rot as much and they serve as a warning.

A large group of people are thieves. 

A group marks their people (young kids too) with a small tattoo.

A man backhands a young girl, sending her sprawling. She has asked him to kill someone for her. 

A woman forced to be a prostitute is branded by a scar on her face from a multi-tailed whip. It blinded her in one eye. They broke her friend’s hands when they took her from him. She pushes a young woman out a window so she is not seen. Six men surround her and throw her down as she lashes out and brings out a dagger. Someone shoots an ear then a leg. A young girl steals two guns.

A man often beats children.

One group of people supposedly “hang people by their nether-regions.”

Two young girls are taken captive and have sacks thrown over their heads, a knife at their backs. A woman kills a man for his position.

To make more money, a man cripples children such as blinding them or taking a hand cause they make more money on the streets. One boy is missing his nose.

A group of kids and teens go to the morgue and see many bodies, some fresh, other bloated from water, even some babies. They take a body. They then break in a prison and release many.

Two men are shot through their hearts. Many watch, their bodies thumping on the floor is heard. A young girl is branded with hot iron.

A drunk man throws a young girl against the wall and she feels her ribs crack. He throws her on the ground, her head cracking. Many men circle her, punching and kicking until she passes out. It takes her a month to walk again.

A severed hand is delivered in a box with one sticking out and coagulated blood. 

Young teens work together to pick pocket in crowds. 

A man tries to kidnap a child. Many children of the street converge on him and beat him, bloody him and cut off his fingers.

A young prince had a whipping boy when he was younger. When the prince would misbehave, the boy got the whipping.

“…they made her eat until she was sick, and they took the heads of all her ladies-in-waiting. They forced her to march half naked in the streets… They held me and my sister for fifteen days—fifteen days of relentless beatings. They forced me to tell lies at my mother’s trial, to accuse her of unspeakable acts.” He has scars from neck to navel.

A young girl slaps a young boy. 

Two young girls made a blood vow. 

“All the families and allies of the revolutionaries were hunted down, and none were spared.”

A young girl is kidnapped.

A young girl attacks a man, slicing his cheek and stabbing his arm. She bites a man who covers her mouth. A man slaps her and she tastes blood. They tie her to a chair and whip her with a multi-tailed whip as she screams.

A story tells of a man selling his son to slavers. The son was whipped. He became a man and came back to enslave his father and whip him. Then he fed a woman leader poppy until she would do all he asked and had many women take it, thereby forming prostitutes and brothels. 

A young woman is hit in the back of the head and passes out. 

A young woman plans to kill a man. 

A woman hypnotizes a woman to burn her hand til it is “ruined.”

One hundred children died of poisoning in a month. The parents were hypnotized to poison them. 

A young woman slowly poisons a man until he dies.

A man backhands a young woman. He threatens her with a gun to her cheek.

A group comes upon a battlefield of dead bodies “the bleeding, open corpses of true battle, guts, excrement, and all.” A young man is shot and falls into another young man. Blood is seeping from a wound.

A young woman causes an explosion. Soldiers are “blown half to bits.”

A large group of women and children is found to be headed to slavers. 

A man shoots at a young woman.

Men fight. A young woman hears the crunch of bone. 

A young girl has a black eyes and blood dripping down her nose. She is tied up. A man backhands a young woman. A man pulls a young girl to him by her hair. A young woman slices a man’s arm and he breaks her arm over his knee. Someone shoots her in the leg. A man shoots a man in the chest. A young woman sobs over him. He convulses and bleeds from his mouth as he speaks his last words. A young woman stabs a man in the cheek as he screams and sprays blood. Another man throws a young woman. A young woman hits a man with a candelabra. A young woman stabs a syringe full of poppy in a man’s neck. A young woman hits a man over and over, blood covering herself, then more women attack him to death. 

Potentially Intense Themes

Corpses of people who starved to death are laid out in the morning. 

A sister banishes her sister for her safety. 

A father sells his daughter to the “flesh houses” (prostitution)

Some walls are covered in bones as decor. 

Many orphans starve to death. A group has lost 10 with many close behind. 

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