Kiss of the Goblin Prince (Shadowlands, #2)

by Shona Husk

[EBookObsessed]

In Book #1, Goblin King, due to the love of Eliza, Roan, the Goblin King, was finally able to break the spell which doomed Roan and his brother, Dai, to live in the shadowlands. The curse was put on the brothers by a druid priest almost 2,000 years ago. They were cursed to live in the shadowlands, slowly losing their soul to the greed for gold which would turn them into goblins.

Kiss of the Goblin Prince tells the story of Dai, the Celtic prince of the Decangli. This story is a bit dark since the lives of both Dai and Amanda are both filled with trauma and they stumble a bit trying to overcome their pasts and their fears.

Amanda is the sister in law of Eliza, and Eliza’s brother Matt was killed shortly after he and Amanda were married, and which was shortly after she found out she was pregnant. Although her daughter is now seven, she has never worked past the trauma of watching her newlywed husband drown trying to save another surfer. Amanda is too focused on her daughter Brigit, who is slowly suffocating from chronic asthma, to realize that her life is passing her by. Once she meets Dai, he starts to re-awaken desires, both physically and a desire to move on with her life. Unlike several other stories that featured widows who mourned their husbands until the hero shows up in town and suddenly they toss off their grief and try to jump the hero, Amanda’s realization that she has stopped living her life was a gradual reawakening and she had to work hard to move past her fears and guilt of moving on without the husband she barely knew. The daughter Brigit was cute but underused as a character.

The story mainly focuses on Dai and trying to adjust to returning to being a man in the “fixed realm.” Dai was taken as a teenager from his father’s lands by the Romans to ensure that his people would not rebel against Rome. Dai was kept as a slave in the house of a cruel General. He only escaped the life of a slave when he was cursed to the shadowlands. Dai had spent most of his almost 2,000 years in the shadowlands learning magic in an attempt to break the druid’s spell. Dai spends most of the story trying to work past his hatred for the Roman General and trying to get used to being a man again. He also is being blocked by The Birch who were holding his books of magic in the fixed realm, so he is trying to relearn magic in this world by trial and error.

This story also deals with the premise of reincarnation and how our lives are continually connected to the same person, as well as the fact that unless you deal with whatever issues you have, you will constantly try to work past the same issue in your future lives.

This is not a quick, light read, nor it is sexy thriller. This is a very interesting and dark story, and it is truly compelling to watch these two interesting characters work through their fears and try to connect with each other.

Received an ARC from the netgalley.com, courtesy of the publisher. Thank you.

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