I'm a little disappointed with this book. I liked it at the beginning, but after a while it just got kind of annoying and tedious.
The Cinderella family bits weren't to my taste. For starters, that whole aspect of the story felt like YOUNG young adult. I could be wrong, but my impression of this series is that it's meant to be upper young adult, bordering on new adult. And the sex scene in this book definitely reflected that. So does this from the synopsis: "perfect for romantic fantasy readers who enjoyed A Court of Silver Flames". Plus the characters on the cover look like 30! And it's been a while since I read A Deal with the Elf King, but I do remember that one feeling more like upper YA too. But the emotional stuff in this book (and the MC's personality in general) just felt SO young—closer to 15 year old YA instead of 17 or 18.
Plus it was extremely repetitive. I know it sounds insensitive given what she went through, but after a point I was like GIRL, GET OVER YOUR SHIT! I get she had a traumatic upbringing, but it got tedious how every.single.thing came back to that.
I also just wasn't into the whole "love is evil" thing. I thought that kind of strong absolute was a bit eye rolly. Katria literally believes that love = pain... always. There is nothing else. There is no good love. It just becomes twisted and painful after the honeymoon period—always. The fact that she couldn't even FATHOM any other kind of love was just annoying, really. Like, okay, I get swearing off love for whatever reason. But surely she must believe that a "good" love exists, even if she doesn't want to risk it? Nope. She's literally like, “That's impossible. That doesn't exist.”
I also didn't see much chemistry between the two main characters either. Maybe part of that was because I wasn't the biggest fan of the love interest. He had a bit of an annoying macho streak. Stupid things like:
- I am a complete and utter failure because you (the MC) had to protect me from danger. I AM THE PRINCE! I should protect YOU!
- Even just stupid stuff like: he can BARELY ride a horse. It's literally discussed how he sucks at it, but Katria is really excellent. But there's this one moment where Katria is on a horse and he has to join her on the same one, and he's like “move” (get out of the front position and let me be up front as the main rider). Because he's the man or some shit? Eye roll.
Every point of the plot was also painfully obvious. I'm normally absolutely fine with an obvious plot; I don't need super hidden twists and turns. But there's this one major point that's so obvious from very early on and I think an excessive amount of hints are dropped about it, to the point where it's just annoying that the MC hasn't figured it out yet.
Anyway I did give this 3 stars. Despite me not loving it, it did have some enjoyable aspects. It was a fast read so a reasonably good palette cleanser book. It was short, fluffy, and entertaining. Definitely not an all time favourite or particularly memorable though.