you know WHAT i just changed this to a five star rating upon reread!!!!!!!

literal insanity, that i’m reading this for the Second Time and it still just made me as excited, that i still want to rush to the next book, and despite knowing what happens next, i’m still soooo looking forward to seeing it unfold.

what is it about these books that just Does It?? is it how earnest and straightforward damen is? how true to his feelings? is it the contrast of that to the hard planes of laurent? is it the fact that laurent, always in control, always hard and calculating, started giving the first signs of the softness within in this book????

i complained about lack of world building in the first book and this one expands so much further, i mean, kinda hard not to when they’re literally always moving around and going to different places. ofc, this is far from the depths of world building in high fantasy, for example, but tbh, i’m not big on historical fiction, so i take me loosely compiled fictional lands over that any day of the week.

and the wait this book ENDS!!! that cliff hanger!!!!! DELICIOUS!????? i can’t imagine having to wait for the next book to be published that would drive me mad.

also like, gosh, i tried to bait my friends into reading this saying it was about gay princes with intrigue and sex thrown in but like. there’s literally a single scene and it’s just so??? romantic???? i got to thinking that this was likely among the most filled with feelings sex scenes i’ve ever read in a book before and it was honestly just a class on nuance and use of restraint and purposeful writing. like, kudos for pacat. why of why can’t they write another adult novel i want mooooore