I'm more disappointed in this book than I was reading ACOMF...and that's saying something.

The premise sounds interesting right...20th century England, but with magic. Merlin is alive and well (not our precious BBC Merlin, but whatever) – technically ruling alongside the Queen of England. We have the London Season about to start, all these grand parties and the huge Bal du Drap d'Or. What could go wrong?

Pretty much everything.

(ALSO...I spoil everything, but this is so you don't have to read this book. Also trigger warning for rape)

I want to start off by talking about the writing. It was bad 95% of the time. The 5% of the time that it was actually good was only when the author was describing stuff – the beautiful dresses, the parties, the scene etc. But the rest of the time, I had to keep checking to make sure this book was actually written by a woman and not a man.

"Her voice was a woman's voice, full of promise and seduction."

and this...

"Her décolletage looked fabulous if she said so herself, her breasts powdered and pushed up by her corset into two pale, plump mounds. Leo is a fool, she said to herself. That skinny Marie may wear the crown, but she'll never boast a chest as magnifique as this."

I mean...seriously. Just look at that. Who even wrote this?? On top of that, the dialogue felt choppy and unrealistic, almost like the author was putting words into these characters' mouths, instead of letting them speak the way they wanted to. Sometimes it was too formal, other times it was too casual, sometimes a character would say something you would never expect them to, other times it was like who is this character and why has she suddenly changed??

Speaking of the characters – there were waaay too many POVS. And I hated all of them.

Beginning with Marie-Victoria, the daughter of the Queen, about to be married to Prince Leo of Prussia (as part of an agreement to end a war b/w the countries). Then we have Aelwyn, daughter of the Merlin, who has just come back to London to become a servant to the Crown. Then we have Ronan, an American girl, whose family is actually poor, but pretending to be rich, who has come to London for the Season with the hopes of landing herself a rich husband. And then we have Isabelle, formerly betrothed to Prince Leo of Prussia, before he had to end things to marry Marie, who is also coming to London for the season. And lastly, we have Wolf, the brother of Prince Leo, who likes to punch people in his spare time (he boxes/fights?) and play strip poker otherwise.

All the characters are self-obsessed, vain, and petty. They only care about themselves and their looks and whether any of the men in their lives like them. They all fall in love in the space of a couple pages and then decide nope, they were wrong, and fall in love with someone else a page later. It was honestly so bad, I was rolling my eyes the entire time.

Ronan bumps into Wolf on the ship over to London, except Wolf doesn't say who he actually is. He manages to convince her to play strip poker, which she at first says no to, but then decides to be a bit more "spontaneous" and agrees. They "fall in love" because according to Wolf, Ronan isn't like any other girl he's met. She's spunky and confident and doesn't care about what anyone thinks, yet he seems to ignore how distraught she was over not getting first-class on the ship and how worried she was that people would find out she's actually poor. And honestly, the only thing Ronan saw in Wolf was "ooh dangerous handsome man, who has a secret past" and fell in love immediately.

Marie-Victoria is secretly in love with Gill, who is pretty much her body guard. And while this relationship could have gone well, it didn't. I didn't feel much for the two of them, probably cause there's so many characters that you never get to know any of them really well. She decides to run away with Gill, managing to convince Aelwyn to disguise herself as Marie (with magic) – and while Aelwyn likes Prince Leo (cause he's handsome), I still found this to be super selfish of Marie (especially since she doesn't give off the selfish vibe usually), considering that if either of them are caught, they'll probably be killed. But of course, before she can run off with Gill properly and marry him, she discovers the plot to blow up the castle, and ditches Gill cause she suddenly realizes her "duty" towards her country. I guess that's sort of relatable? I mean, its definitely more realistic for a princess to realize that she doesn't have a lot of freedom and probably never will, but her status as princess and one day a Queen, allows her to make a lot of changes that she couldn't make as a regular person. But Marie literally sees some homeless people and eats some regular food from an inn and is like wow life sucks for everyone except me, then almost gets mugged by some boys and then gets saved by Wolf and goes off to save the day. At some point, she also gains the confidence to stand up to herself.

Isabelle's story is kind of sad, but also not? I mean her stupid guardian, Hugh, is a creep and a pedophile, who keeps touching her even though she doesn't want to be touched. Yup...that happened. She's betrothed to Prince Leo (before he's engaged to Marie-Victoria), and when he comes to visit her manor, he manages to "convince her" (I'm calling this rape though, cause she literally says in the book that she said no multiple times and he didn't stop) to sleep with him. And that's pretty much their relationship. We later found out that Isabelle decided to pick the lesser of two evils: it was either Hugh or Leo. So she went with Leo, with the hopes that he could protect her from Hugh. And that's sad. On top of that, after Leo is engaged to Marie, he wants to keep Isabelle as a mistress, rapes her again (pretty much), and then Isabelle realizes that Leo sucks and she needs to end this. She ends it, her cousin Louis expresses how he loves her, she turns him away, gets jealous when Louis ends up sleeping with some other pretty, rich girl. Then professes her love to him when he's about to die, and decides she was always in love with him and they plan to get married and run off to his small estate, where they can raise the child she's pregnant with (aka Prince Leo's baby), but then guess what happens at the end of the book... I'll talk about that later.

Aelwyn is ehh. Honestly she wasn't that fleshed out. She went along with Marie's plan because Leo was attractive and she's always been jealous of Marie for having everything. Then she realizes who Leo is and kills him in one second, cause did I forget to mention? She's really powerful. Oh and some stupid guy in Avalon (where she was banished after she almost killed Marie when she was little), manipulated her into falling in love with him, had sex with her, and then got bored and left her.

So yeah...the men all suck in this book. And the women aren't any better.

Honestly, the only good men were the one gay couple (Archie and I don't remember his name sorry I suck), were nice and funny. Louis was good too, except somehow he falls in love with some random girl and wants to marry her, then decides to have a duel with Prince Leo, wins and runs off with Isabelle. So????

Wolf was okay. I felt like he honestly didn't have a good eye when it came to woman, since he fell in love with Ronan. But I liked his relationship with Marie, since they're childhood friends. When Prince Leo died, and Wolf became the heir, the marriage between him and Marie was something I could get behind. Obviously they don't love each other, but they have a good, pure friendship, which is better than nothing, plus he is nice when he isn't convincing women to play strip poker?? Lol, I'm making him sound worse than he is. When he called Ronan over to the palace to tell her he can't actually marry her, I died of laughter cause Ronan deserved it. I will say, he turned on his brother a lot quicker than I thought he would, but Leo is a piece of shit...

The ending was so weird. Like imagine reading a book that you absolutely hate, and then with 5% left, everything exciting and interesting that could possibly happens, happens. It tied up so nicely that I was left rolling eyes again.

Isabelle runs off with Louis and her unborn child, so they can get married. Hugh is pissed cause he wants her. So he gets his mercenary men to attack them, kills off Louis, and then forces Isabelle to marry him because she has no one and is pregnant. And it ends off with Isabelle saying she's going to marry him and once her child is born, she'll stab Hugh with a knife she keeps in her drawer, and then run away. And guess what happens? Just that lol. It's described in one sentence during Marie's wedding to Wolf. She runs off to a cottage and decides to raise her son (who just so happens to be as charming as Prince Leo was) on her own.

Ronan doesn't go back to New York. Becomes a secretary for some rich woman and starts her own hat business? I didn't know she could sew that well, but okay...

Aelwyn and Marie are sisters. SURPRISE. The Merlin apparently foresaw this whole book. And the Queen also had a dream that her future daughter would betray her, so they decided that the Queen would have two daughters, one from Merlin (aka Aelwyn) and one from the seed of her dead husband (aka Marie), and based on some crystal ball, if they worked together it would prevent the whole world from exploding. And if they didn't end up working together, then the Merlin would have to step in. LIKE WOW

Also, the Merlin was poisoning Marie since she was a child because somehow her weakness would give her confidence later to become a good queen?

Someone please explain this to me, cause I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

So yeah, this book was terrible. I don't know how I finished it. Definitely not reading the next one. I'm very sorry about this review.