Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Rating: 2.95 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 Rhea, Cadis, Suki, and Iren have lived together since they were children. They are called sisters. They are not. They are called equals. They are not. They are princesses…and they are enemies. Not long ago, a brutal war ravaged their kingdoms, and Rhea’s father was the victor. As a gesture of peace, King Declan brought the daughters of his rivals to live under his protection—and his ever-watchful eye. For ten years the girls have trained together as diplomats and warriors, raised to accept their thrones and unite their kingdoms in peace. But there is rarely peace among sisters. Sheltered Rhea was raised to rule everyone—including her “sisters”—but she’s cracking under pressure. The charismatic Cadis is desperately trying to redeem her people from their actions during the war. Suki guards deep family secrets that isolate her, and quiet Iren’s meekness is not what it seems. All plans for peace are shattered when the palace is attacked. As their intended futures lie in ashes, Rhea, Cadis, Suki, and Iren must decide where their loyalties lie: to their nations, or to each other. (goodreads.com) It’s summer! Time to read, put off reading because you think you’ve got plenty of time to read, eat frozen treats, join summer reading programs, go swimming, and worry about what you are going to do with the rest of your life! Gotta love summer! Do you have any particular genre you really love to read in summer? Maybe you just read a bit of everything, but my favorite thing to read in the summer is fantasy. I love to get into a high fantasy novel and just relish the world building and crazy magic going on. I already have several (a lot) of fantasy books lined up to read (though I doubt I’ll get through most of them). Hopefully I’ll also put up reviews for these books once I get done with them! The book I’ll be talking about today is one of the ones that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now. I like the concept of it, I really like the cover (and we all know it doesn’t take much more than a pretty cover to get me interested in a book), and it’s fantasy! Perfect for my first read of the summer! And I had such high hopes for it. Let me start by saying the book isn’t bad. It took me a while to get into it and it didn’t hold my attention as well as some books do, but it was still interesting and I was still somewhat invested in the story. It just wasn’t the best writing I’ve ever read in my life. Or the second best. If I’m being totally honest I’ve read fanfiction with a more developed writing style. But it was still a fairly enjoyable read! There were four main-ish characters, but I think the “most main” character was Rhea, as she is the one featured on the cover and it seems like she gets the most written from her perspective. Rhea was a character. She certainly was. I honestly don’t feel one way or the other about Rhea. She did some things that kind of annoyed me and she was a little bit too naive, but characters are supposed to have flaws, right? I didn’t love her but I didn’t hate her. She was lukewarm and that’s not really what you want from a character to my understanding. The second “most main” character is probably Cadis, who I liked a great deal more than I liked Rhea. In fact, she is probably my favorite of the “sisters”. Cadis had less irritating flaws and she was more interesting to read about… partially because she wasn’t pining over the stable boy like Rhea was (like every other paragraph Rhea was checking to see what the stable boy was doing and he was never doing anything worth reading about). Cadis was the heir apparent of a country made up of seafarers so she had so piratical qualities that I thought were fun. And she genuinely cared about people (unlike Rhea who only cared about her father’s opinion and if the stable boy was thinking about her), so it was nice to read about her interactions with people. Iren was another one of the girls and she was interesting and fun to read about too. I found the writing style of her chapters interesting because they were more focused on what the people around her were doing and what that implied rather than what she was thinking because she has the mindset of a spy. She was always observing and it was really fun to read from her perspective. It kind of reminded me of Sherlock Holmes and how he always deduces things about those around him. And last of the princess/queen/warrior/ladies is Suki. No offense to the author but every time there was a chapter about Suki I just wanted to scream. She’s a totally unstable little brat who hates everyone around her (except the stable boy) and is constantly trying to undermine the plans of the other girls. Not to mention her chapters were a bear to read because of all of the parenthesis. Basically (her sentences (went something (like this (because she has so many (distracting thoughts (about everything (so we never really get a complete (thought (and you can’t keep track (of what’s being said (because you’re so confused (not to mention it ends the sentence like this.))))))))))). AND THAT GETS REALLY ANNOYING REALLY FAST (though I did find it clever in the first chapter). Also, I’m aware that I did not use any of those parentheses correctly, I was trying to make a point. The last character I want to mention is the stable boy, Endrit *loud tired sigh of frustration*. So this guy is pretty much the only friend any of these girls have besides each other, and since they hate each other, he is pretty much their only friend. Now, I think the reason Iren and Cadis were so interesting and my favorite characters was because they didn’t care that much about Endrit. Rhea and Suki, however, seemed to be more focused on winning his heart than they were saving their kingdoms. It’s just boring to read about how Rhea is so worried about all the other girls he flirts with and how Suki wants to murder Rhea because Endrit seems to like her better. Endrit isn’t even that great of a guy! All we know about him for most of the book is that he is muscular, has brown (I think) curly hair, he can be mischievous, and that he must spend a lot of money on shirts because he’s constantly losing them. That’s it. That’s all we know. He does have a purpose toward the very end of the book, but it could have been filled by someone else easily. Other than that the only reason he was there was to be the love interest. The plot was good. I liked all of the political intrigue and stuff (not that I really understood it), I wish there had been a few less action scenes because I really don’t care that Rhea can do a murder-waltz or whatever or that Suki wanted to pretty much rip out Rhea’s throat. Oddly enough, I quite enjoyed the bit where Cadis was saving the day by destroying people with her bow skills (Cadis, you’re doing a wonderful job sweetie, keep it up) and Iren’s sneaky fighting style was fun to read about too. In my opinion there needs to be a sequel if there isn’t one already in the works. The plot ended far too abruptly for me to be satisfied and I really wanted to know what happened next. So far I can’t find anything about whether or not there will be a sequel so if you know something then please tell me. I can already picture the gorgeous cover for that book: green themed, because that’s Cadis’ kingdom’s color, with Cadis on the front, blonde braids billowing in the wind of the sea, and maybe some cannons going off in the background. I want it. And then a blue one for Iren! And if we have to we can have a yellow one for Suki - hey! They have the Hogwart house colors! They don’t fit very well into their designated houses though, except maybe Iren (and that could be because I like Iren and I like Ravenclaw). Anyway, I did enjoy this read and I am really excited to get going on the rest of my summer reading! Maybe I’ll post a list of all the books I want to read this summer and you can let me know some of the ones you want to read! Maybe we can do a book club thing! Oooh, that would be a load of fun, wouldn’t it? A bunch of people reading the same book and then we could have a discussion about it! I think there is a way to do a forum on here, maybe we could do it that way! What do you think? Would you want to do a book club online with me? What book would you like to read? Let me know in the comment section below! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my review! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go overthrow some kingdoms! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30312847-daughters-of-ruin
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