A major disappointment:( this had so much potential! Pirates? Spies? Gun toting badass ladies? A cute and whimsical cover to match the cute and whimsical romance? Sign up me up. Unfortunately, I hated the way this was delivered. I found the transitions and execution of the plot itself to be disjointed and bizarre. This had a unique approach to fantasy but ultimately, the pacing left me feeling bored and confused.

For me this started slow and I was a little confused but as it went on I was hooked. The pieces fit together perfectly, there were twists that I would've never guessed, and I never thought it would've been possible for a story to have this many layers. The entire time I was reading this, I kept thinking about how amazing this would be as a movie. It was captivating!

Holy shit, this is dark fantasy at its best. Even the most disturbing elements manage to take it up a notch. This is 100% the kind of book you need to read the triggers for (slavery, r*pe, animal death, and cannibalism to name a few.) I will say the horrific themes were in fact horrifying, The Leviathan will always break my heart and Shameek's situation will live in my head rent free because I actually lost sleep because of it. If you can stomach it, the ending is satisfying and you'll fall in love with Fortuna.

A solid mix of slow burn romance, betrayal, magic, and action. This was an intriguing world with bounds of magic and wonder and a sheltered princess in the heart of it all. I loved the banter, dynamics, and court political intrigue. The storytelling was excellent and the plot felt well executed. Solid 4.5 stars.

Well...I like it slightly more than the first book. I'm not sure what it is, but I never feel the sparks between Ashley Herring Blake's characters and find most of them annoying (except Jordan, Jordan has my heart.) I didn't like Astrid and I found the storyline to be fairly boring. Honestly this whole book can be summed up as 'just okay'. The ending was sweet but it didn't give me butterflies or make me blush like romances usually do.

Disappointed is the nicest way to say this book was a flop. Look, I was super excited. I love mythology. This sounds fun. This was... a big nope. The author would have random memories in the middle of action scenes and would rely on telling you instead of showing you the action. So much of this felt like filler. For the most of this, I didn't understand what was going on or where the story was because the writing was lackluster.

It was fine but it definitely gave off the vibe as a basic horror story. Characters were bland and had no personalization, the writing was a bit weird, and I wasn't the biggest fan of going back and forth between present and past as it felt like it was taking from the story. Not quite 3 stars for me.

Not the worst book I've read but forgettable. This had an interesting premise and had a lot of potential, unfortunately, the writing and plot execution was a bit lackluster. I really was hoping for more sci-fi but instead was given a ton of relationship drama that I didn't care about. Not for me personally, but perhaps I'm not the right audience.