I am a big fan of J. Johnson's novels, however The Road to Neverwinter, while being okay, felt too much like a 5e adventure checklist (not sure if it is because of the author or because of hasbro). I was afraid that this one will be the same. Fortunately, I was wrong!
Maybe some minor spoilers here:
The first one or two chapters again felt like an advertisement for the main things that you can find in 5e. However after that the story picks up and the author presents a great adventure. The story is clearly for the younger audience, there are no harsh words, there is not so much graphic violence. However I also enjoyed it, being an older fan of the D&D game and novels. There were some really interesting items, places and ideas that can easily be transferred to the game table. And I don't care if it is cringe or not, but I am playing Baudric in our next game, I have not ever seen a better character idea.
Overall, I hope that everyone will like the novel as much as I liked it and WotC will see that we still read novels, so they should not be afraid to give us more of these. WotC, please, let the writers do their job, don't make them write adverts for your products.