This book was really set up for me to love it, but in the end, I was kind of let down.

Queen of Coin and Whispers follows newly crowned Queen Lia and her spymaster Xania as they navigate the court and attempt reform whilst surrounded by traitors and schemers alike.

I generally like court intrigue type stories: I like the politics, I like the element of mystery, I like when multiple characters all have their own motivations and you get to see how they unwind when thrown together. But I just felt like this one wasn't really all that well done.

My favorite part of this story was by far Lia and Xania's romance. It felt real, there was dynamism to it. They disagreed, they argued, but in the end, they loved each other. We get to see Lia have to make tough decisions as a leader, and watching her struggle to make the right decision when there was no right decision was interesting to be sure, especially as it affected her relationship. F/F representation is still relatively rare, so I'll always appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I didn't love a lot of other aspects of this book. Firstly, Xania as the spymaster made no sense to me. She had no prior training, so I have no idea how or why she was suddenly Very Good at it. She would often make assertions about people with no proof to back it up and the whole thing just felt really unrealistic and kind of took me out of it. Hand in hand with that, I don't think the court intrigue aspect of the book was actually executed very well at all. There were no shock betrayals, everything played out as expected with the people who we were told were bad guys from the beginning just kinda...being bad guys the whole time.

Finally, my biggest issue with this book: the pacing. A lot of this book was really, really slow, but then all of a sudden at the end, months would pass in a single paragraph in a way that bothered me. It wasn't just the five year time jump at the epilogue, which wouldn't have bothered me on its own. It's that there were several scenes at the end to wrap everything up that happened several months apart and it really threw me for a loop. I really needed either the entire book to have that "lots and lots of time is passing" vibe, or I needed the end to slow way way down.

All in all, this book was decent. If you're looking for a fantasy to pick up casually or if you're looking to read more f/f, I think this is a good choice for either of those things. But I don't think I'll be coming back to it.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.