by Alexandra Rowland.
In this book we follow Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, and his bodyguards as they investigate a break-in and tries to find the source of counterfeit money.
So, this is a somewhat hard review to write because I’m honestly not sure what the book was about. It’s a book with some great elements, but also some less great ones.
Let’s start with the plot. There’s some sort of mystery at the core of this story. Counterfeit money has been found, and Kadou must find where they are from before this money spreads and his country loses its good reputation. It’s a good premise, but it’s like nothing happens. Things move at such a slow pace that we lose what’s happening and it all just becomes confusing, and every twist that happens are so obvious that it doesn’t even feel like a twist.
I kept reading and reading and it felt like I’d been doing so forever, and then I was still at just 20% or something. It was a pain to get through at times because there was nothing interesting happening.
In the end, the plot didn’t do anything for the story and it would have been the same story without the mystery element. I rather think it would have benefitted from being a straight up romance with more details and focus on that part.
So, let’s talk about the romance. This is a male/male romance, and there are a lot of queer characters and non-binary individuals in a world where this seems to be the norm and there’s no mention of this being a problem for anyone. This I love. I think it’s great to have this representation and for queerness and all that to be just part of normal life.
I do, however, have some minor issues with the way things were portrayed here. First of all, it often times felt a little like “look how inclusive I am” instead of these details feeling like a natural part of the story.
And then we have the ex boyfriend who goes from an interesting character to what can best be described as a caricature of himself. He ended up like the over the top gay friend in bad soap operas who just calls everyone darling and flicks his hand in a dramatic way when speaking. Which would have been fine if the characters also felt like a complete person who wasn’t just there to be the comical gay friend.
And while we’re on the topic of romance. This romance reads like a woman’s fantasy of m/m relationships rather than a proper romance. I can’t really tell what it was about the way the more intimate scenes were written that made it feel this way, but there was nothing there between the characters. It didn’t feel real. And the characters didn’t even really feel like men in certain parts. Sure, men can be feminine, but this, this was something else. At times it was almost like the when we make fun of the way men write women in books, only here it was a woman writing some strange, exaggerated version of sexy men.
The romance is said to be slow burn in this book, but honestly it’s not. There’s really no burn at all. It goes from absolutely nothing to instalust, and then all of a sudden the characters are madly in love? No. There needs to be tension, not nothing and then everything at once.
There was also basically no worldbuilding in this book, and for the most part it was just extremely confusing. And we were given no context to what was happening, and sometimes there could be pages upon pages or some random information that had nothing to do with anything. Like some speech about currency that make no sense at all and just made me feel like I was back in some boring class.
Towards the end things did move a little faster though, especially when it came to the romance, and I has somewhat started to enjoy reading the book despite its flaws. Then, however, I realized I was suddenly at 98% and the book was about to end and it felt like there was tons of more things that needed to be resolved. And I suppose they were resolved, in the last 2%, but then it just felt extremely rushes and strange. Especially considering we spent 98% of the book going absolutely nowhere. There was time to spread things out at an even and pace that would have made the whole thing an enjoyable read.
So, I’m ultimately going to give this book 3/5 stars and put it in the category of decent books I don’t regret reading, but will never pick up again.
Do I recommend reading it? Sure. If you like romance, queerness, slow paced books with a hint of mystery, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this one.
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