The Queen's Rising (Queen's Rising, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

[Ashley]

Things I liked:

- Really cool kingdom/rebellion story. This is honestly one of my favourite plots.

- Brienna was a great character. I enjoyed reading from her POV.

- Brienna receives some memories from one of her ancestors and I thought that was a cool concept.

- The whole thing with passions was cool, though it actually ended up being far less significant than I thought. Still a cool concept though.

- The book gets neatly wrapped up at the end, as if it were a standalone (though it's listed on Goodreads as #1 in a series).

Things I didn't like:

- The romance. It was honestly just so mediocre. I feel like it should have been bigger and more intense, or just cut out completely. But as it is, it felt kind of useless and half baked. Also, at first, I hugely mis-pictured the love interest as kind of an old man and was really thrown off when they had an intimate moment. I think it confused me because it was a teacher/student relationship and I just naturally pictured the teacher as an old man, though perhaps that was due to me forgetting or misreading a description that mentioned him as actually being a VERY young teacher.

- The world building was so-so. Parts of it were really interesting, but the whole story is centered around a rebellion and overthrowing the evil king. But I didn't feel like I ever really saw evidence of his evilness (or at least not until we met him). It would have helped a lot if there were more stories and examples of how horrible he was.

- I'm kind of sad that we didn't see more of the passion sisters after the beginning. I loved their relationship.