Well that was kind of disappointing. I’ve been quite excited to read this book because it was one of my most anticipated releases of last year that I didn’t end up getting to. When I saw my library had finally acquired a copy of the audiobook, you best believe I snagged this right up. What initially had me wanting to read this story was it’s comparison to The Cruel Prince, and it’s similar enemies-to-lovers romance. However, there draws a line where a book can be labeled as a comparison and where a story is practically a blatant carbon copy of another.

And really Violet Made of Thorns is the latter. At this book’s core, this was simply just an elaborate Cruel Prince fanfic AU, with our FMC, Violet a semi-copy-and-paste of Jude and our MMC, Cyrus, a nicer, less edgelordy version of Cardan. Violet is a gifted seer, one of very few that live in her world. When she was a child, she saved prince Cyrus and became appointed the court seer. Over the years, Violet has become hard and resilient to survive, lying about the prophecies she gives people at the king’s orders. The prince has grown to hate her, due to her unflinching loyalty to the king and her downfall into corrupted morality. When Violet lies about a prophecy she foretold of the prince’s true love, she sets off a chain reaction of events that could kill the prince and embroil the kingdom into war.

I think what bothered me about this story the most wasn’t how similar this was to The Cruel Prince despite my criticisms above. I would have been fine with the slivers of originality had there been world building or an interesting love interest. This is another one of those fantasy-romance books that have a heavy emphasis on the romance and very little world-building and magic systems. When I read fantasy-romance my primary goal is to find a good fantasy first and a good romance second (which is very rare and hard to find). Not only was the world building shit in here, but the love interest was making me yawn. I wouldn’t have even minded if he was a Cardan wannabe. This guy was just too good, too nice, and too pure and he really had no other attributes besides that. I love me a golden retriever man, but Cyrus was just sleep worthy. But despite me catching some sleep everytime this man came on page, I really liked Violet. She’s very unlikable, and very similar to Jude as I said before. She is morally gray, intelligent, and literally cares for no one but herself. She’s playing her own game for power, and it was so refreshing. Her unlikability made her likable. No one ever had her back in that crusty ass kingdom and she’d be damned if she didn’t have her own.

The romance was fine, very much I-hate-you-so-much-I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-kill-you-or-choke-you-or-if-I-actually-love-you (very much Jurdan esc) and it was pretty fun. Violet and Cyrus had decent chemistry, but not enough for me to fully care about what happened to them. Cyrus just put me to sleep so much that I didn’t really end up caring what happened to them together lol.

I don’t think this was bad. It was a solid debut with some good writing that could really grow as this author continues. Although there are (very) suggestive illusions to sex, the rest of Violet Made of Thorns reads quite young to me. With the low world building, mostly 1D characters, and heavy emphasis on the romance, I think this would work quite well for the younger YA audience. Unfortunately, that is just not me anymore. However, don’t let the average rating keep you from reading this book if you’re interested. I definitely think it will work for a specific audience, it just wasn’t personally for me or what I was looking for. Fun audiobook though!