I wish to start out by saying that I slowly fell in love with this setting - with the atmospheres and tones it developed, the magic system, the forest-based eldritch horror, and the mysterious fantasy adventure that ensued for two-thirds of the book. If there were any more written in this world - not even a direct sequel, just stories happening to take place in the same setting - I'd definitely pick them up.

However, there were glaring flaws with this specific story - especially towards the beginning - that nearly had me DNFing had I not persisted until the plot got juicy. The romance is the main source of it, it just did not work at all. The love interest is so unlikable from the start and the "redemption" so sudden and unbuilt that I never truly got to like him even by the final page, and therefore just could not believe the romance. He starts off with such bad anger issues - even when things are going well, he has a fit about that, and I felt even more soured on him. He's MIA for a good chunk of the middle, which unfortunately means there's hardly any convincing development for his character and the relationships; the author still tried to have hints of it on the heroine's side, but it just felt forced, and I believe the very sudden rush of "progress" in the romance right before this gap of his appearances was meant to compensate for his incoming absence, but that also just felt forced and completely unbelievable. The heroine has more chemistry with her best friend Kasia than she does with the Dragon - I think she actually kissed Kasia more times than the Dragon! Their relationship was a lot stronger and Kasia was even with her for most of the important plot in the middle of the story, with the relationship being the catalyst for many developments in the adventure, so why wasn't this story about them being sapphic??

As much as I love the story of the latter two-thirds of the book, the first few chapters are so painful to get through. The overall story feels like two different books: that the author set out to write a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but it suddenly became usurped by a more intriguing fantasy mystery-adventure with eldritch horror and sapphic love, and had to awkwardly shoehorn in the actual het "love makes you a better person" romance at the end.

Something else I noticed as I read, which I don't actually have an issue with at all: it feels like this was at least loosely inspired by Howl's Moving Castle? I don't think it's because of a possible overlap in the mythological sources, since this story is heavily Polish while I believe Howl is Welsh. I started to suspect it as

the heroine realized she was secretly a witch the whole time and the Dragon had known the whole time, too.

Maybe I'm reaching and all just coincidental, but I could imagine various details being spun from Howl, made very different in this plot but the sentiment of them still present if you're familiar enough:

the intimidating wizard in a part of the land no one steps foot in (with similar-ish names for said lands), the "dragon" in the wizard's name, the very beautiful and perfect girl from the heroine's life that she compares her plain self to, the order for all magic-users to be trained and serve the crown, the war between two kingdoms due to missing royalty

. It was around the point of the detail of stuck-up rich people riding in boxes with chairs inside that I really started to suspect that either this was a fanfic of Howl turned original, or the author was just really influenced while making this story. Again, I don't actually take issue with it, and I don't think it's something like plagiarism. I just thought it was a very interesting detail, and potentially a draw for anyone into Howl's Moving Castle.

One more odd detail that kinda turned me off every time it got brought up was how dirty the heroine gets and how much attention is drawn to it each time. The amount of times it happened and how much detail gave me "the author's fetish" vibes in the scale of discomfort.

Where to begin? This book is as close to a unique story as I've ever read. It's hard to describe because it feels quite original.

The underlying tones are definitely Beauty and the Beast but in very much its own way. 

Our heroine, Nieshka is instantly loveable for her clumsy, messy, confident self. I've never read a hero quit like her and it was very enjoyable.
Her sunshine to the Dragon's grumpy was delightful.

Perhaps one of my favorite things about this book was the themes of friendship and individuality seen side by side without being pitted against each other. Nieshka and her best friend Kasia have a beautiful friendship that acknowledges their flaws but never stops them from loving each other. We see hints of real human jealousy, grief, annoyance, and love in both girls even though their personalities couldn't be more different. I don't know if I've ever seen such a wholesome and believable friendship in literature before.

I enjoyed the story over all, though for a while the plot did get terribly confusing and difficult to follow. Once we were given answers they were mostly satisfying.

While I will never completely enjoy the "undefeatable villain" trope, the reasoning behind this one was at least understandable.

Even the ending was quite unique. I enjoyed the less-than-perfect end. I think everything neatly wrapped in a bow would have betrayed the overall feel of the story.

Over all I definitely liked Uprooted, and am likely to read it again.