Books book reviews Petra Lord’s Queen of Faces is a Page-Turner Full of Secrets and Magic A fantastical dark academia YA novel set in a world of deceit, secrets, and magic… By Cassie Schulz | Published on March 24, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share “Body is a privilege. Memory is a privilege. Name is a privilege.” I grew up during the YA dystopian boom, feasting upon worlds like those in Divergent and The Maze Runner. I’ve written for Reactor once before about my love for Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. I’m currently devouring Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series. When the world feels overwhelming, I turn back to what I know and love. Everything is overwhelming lately, so it feels like I am always looking for takes on the genre that feel both nostalgic and brand new, understanding that that’s a tough balance to ask anyone for. With her debut novel, Queen of Faces, Petra Lord delivers. By tying together a fantastical dark academia page-turner with a world of deceit, secrets, and magic, Queen of Faces feels like a return to form but with the diversity we sorely lacked in the late ’00s and early 2010s. In the heart of Caimor, the world inhabited by our characters, Annabelle Gage is dying. Her only hope? Acceptance into the prestigious and cutthroat Paragon Academy. If she can get there, she wouldn’t just have stability in her life—she’d have access to a brand new body to swap to. If she passes her exam, she can say goodbye to her current body—a basic boy model—and change to one that isn’t actively rotting from the inside out. After a rejection for enrollment and a body heist gone wrong, Annabelle’s future looks hopeless… until she’s offered a different opportunity from the Paragon Headmaster himself: face execution, or become his mercenary, a weapon to take down the infamous Black Wraith. Relying on her own magic that she doesn’t fully understand, a mysterious boy named Wes who she’s forced to work with, a couple of rebel outcasts, and her undercover work at Paragon Academy as Adam Weaver’s personal assistant, Annabelle races against time—and against her body—to fulfill her mission. In a world that operates in shades of grey, Annabelle, Wes, and their allies must decide what’s more important: their original reasons to fight the Black Wraith, or protecting the little family they’ve made. Queen of Faces is a book that rides or dies with its characters. While we have our main ones—Annabelle and the character we come to know as Wes—there are so many to keep track of. There’s the Headmaster of Paragon, Carriwitch, who pulls our characters into the whole scheme of defeating Khaovie, the Black Wraith. There are other students at the school, and smaller characters from Annabelle’s past, like the slimy Clementine. I personally find later characters who join Annabelle and Wes to be delightful, but I can’t say more about them without moving into spoiler territory! Be careful picking a favorite, though: No one is safe from the consequence of simply trying to survive the world of Caimor. Buy the Book Queen of Faces Petra Lord Buy Book Queen of Faces Petra Lord Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Lord packs a lot into the 420 pages of this book, which can, at times, be disorienting. The pacing is fast and it is up to the reader to keep up. There’s a lot of lore to keep tabs on, too: the wars of the past, the different countries that make up Caimor, outstings, Codexes, the magic system. I loved the magic system, and the fact that everyone’s magical specialty was unique to them. I personally loved Wes’ paper magic. I don’t know if this was a reference to the anime series Read Or Die, but as someone who has wanted paper magic since learning about the series from an Anime Insider magazine, I was obsessed with Wes’ power.  Petra Lord has an unending amount of creativity in her work that I cannot wait to see harnessed for book two. Queen of Faces made me nostalgic for the 2010s era of heart-pounding, unpredictable dystopia, with the bonus of diversity enriching the genre even further. I know Teen Cassie would have sprinted over to Fanfiction dot net for more. I highly recommend you grab a physical copy, which has both a map and a breakdown of the Four Schools of Magic. On top of having just a gorgeous first edition book (shout out to book designer Aurora Parlagreco), you’ll have a helpful resource as you read! Once I got used to the pacing and Lord’s writing style, I locked in. I could never tell you where the story would go next, and I feel exactly the same about book two. I have no idea what’s next for Annabelle, Wes, and the inhabitants of Caimor, but I do know one thing for sure: I’ll be putting in a preorder at my local independent bookstore as soon as I get the chance.[end-mark] Queen of Faces is published by Henry Holt & Co.Read an excerpt. The post Petra Lord’s <i>Queen of Faces</i> is a Page-Turner Full of Secrets and Magic appeared first on Reactor.