R M Pearcy

This book was 2019 January’s Sapphic Book Club read hosted by sapphicbookclub.

So, this was nice, if not as gripping as I hoped. With the plot featuring evil queens, fleeing from assassins, intrigue and betrayal, I was expecting something kind of dark and thrilling. Instead, this ended up being ... cosy, I guess. It's a sweet story about two royal teenage girls falling in love and going on a journey with their closest friends, determined to do the right thing for their kingdoms.

There were some grammar errors that jumped out at me, like 'couldn't bare it' and 'your welcome', but I was reading an ARC, so hopefully they will have been fixed up for the published version.… (mere)

This book was 2019 January’s Sapphic Book Club read hosted by sapphicbookclub..

So my copy of this is 405 pages (although some of those are empty because of a formatting issue in the ARC). I read up until about 300, then decided I'm just not motivated enough to read the rest.

1) I felt like the characterisations were all over the place, so I couldn't really connect to the characters, and I was bored a lot of the time. I guess the point of the book is to show that the stories and rumours we see about Rya paint her as evil, and then we get the truth from her perspective, but like... the truth is still awful? Like, she's still an evil person for doing that stuff? And it's just not consistent with her behaviour to the Ashen and I have no idea why Cam is attracted to her or how she can overlook that stuff.

2) Listen. I know this is supposed to be YA and YA is all about teens doing incredible stuff, so okay, I can buy the two main characters being 19 and 17. I imagined them at least mid-20s before I found out their ages, but fine, I can roll with that. But the other stuff? The apparently-13-year-old kid who doesn't sound 13 at all and talks about killing someone casually? The big bad scary assassin turning out to be 15? The bad guy drafting literal 11-year-olds into his army? It's just too much for me tbh.… (mere)