The Lion's Daughter

by Loretta Chase

[Angie]

The Lion’s Daughter was a disappointment. I really thought I would like it at first, because fake deaths and gender-bending! Unfortunately, everything is so drawn out and the plot threads get all twisted in a way that was confusing and frustrating rather than interesting. When it all starts, Esme’s father has just faked his murder, so that she’ll go to England to be with her only remaining family. But Esme has her sights set on revenge, which causes her to cross paths with her cousin and Varian, completely derailing her mission.

After a pretty good introduction, The Lion’s Daughter gets very slow and bogged down with too many plots and details. They’re all traveling through Albania so that Esme can marry the man who supposedly killed her father and then kill him herself. But then her cousin who is suppose to be on his way to England is kidnapped, so she leads his rescue, and then there’s something about a missing chess piece, secret messages, and evil Uncles. The latter points just kept randomly being mentioned before randomly appearing again and so on until the end when everyone is arguing over who gets this valuable chess set, because everyone wants everyone else to have it and I don’t care!

The romance of The Lion’s Daughter was also super awkward. I loved this idea of Varian being totally broke and essentially seducing his way across Europe and avoiding his debts before meeting his true love in Esme. I also liked Esme at first because she’s super strong, brave, feisty and doesn’t need a man! But then, they meet and things get weird. Esme is described as looking prepubescent which helps her pass as a young boy, and Varian is totally lusting after her and hating himself for lusting after a child! We know that she’s 18, but he doesn’t, so therefore he is attracted to a child! I’m guessing she looks 10-12 and that is freaking creepy! I honestly couldn’t get passed that.

The Lion’s Daughter was just not a great read. It had some fun and exciting points, but overall, it left me bored and confused a lot. From reading other reviews, this does seem to be one of the author’s weaker novels, so I’m just going to pretend that it didn’t happen and continue on with the series.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.