I'm still on the fence for my rating but I know it's somewhere around a 4 ⭐ for me.

It had been at least 8 months since I read the first in the series, so jumping into this without a refresher on the story was very confusing - but I also loved that Broadbent chose not to use the first 50+ pages for scene-by-scene recapping of Serpent (one of my biggest pet peeves in reading). After the first 20ish pages, I chose to go backwards and read the novella Six Scorched Roses and I'm so happy I did because it pulled me back into the world and made me excited to see where the story was going next. 

While I loved the story of Oraya and Raihn, my favorite part of this book was the exploration of Oraya and Vincent's relationship and the complexity that was Vincent's love for her. My final breaking point (sob session activated) was when Oraya had the opportunity to view Vincent's memory of seeing her for the first time and realizing that he couldn't lose her. Vincent was a someone that never learned how to love, and when it was forced into his heart, it terrified him. No matter how badly he wanted to make things different for her (and in many ways succeeded) he didn't have enough knowledge on how to love her the way he truly wanted to. Personally, I loved Vincent's character and I'm happy we got to learn more about him and his true feelings as a father that never learned how to love until it was too late. 

<blockquote>"But what I [Vincent] was not expecting was to love you so devastatingly much."</blockquote>

I felt like this was a good rounding out of Oraya and Raihn's journeys through separation, anger, acceptance, and the power they have to change the kingdom, not alone, but together.

Overall, I loved the story and the characters. I'm not sure if I'll continue into the 3rd of the series when it comes out as we'll be switching characters, but it's possible. I do always enjoy a good vampire love story.