The ending was perfect. All the stuff in between was great too.

A solid book 2 for this series and you can bet I will be checking out the next book when I can get my hands on it. There were some minor editing issues I noticed throughout but nothing big enough to take away from the story.

Full review to come.

I enjoyed this book. It was a bit slow to begin but mainly due to the getting all of the background. I won't get into a ton of detail here as I don't want to spoil it...as it is, there are a lot of spoilers here...be warned.

I won't go into the whole backstory on Cassel and his family here but I found Cassel to be an interesting main character. He comes from a family of workers and has been told all his life that he is the only one in his family that doesn't have a power or curse. His family also told him that he killed his best friend, Lila, when he was younger. Come to find that

Spoiler

they have all been lying to him and working him. Oh..Cassel also has one of the rarest curses, transformation, and he ended up turning Lila into a cat not killing her.

I felt so bad for Cassel throughout the story.

Spoiler

His brothers are jealous of his power and are just plain mean. They lie to him and beat him up and the whole time I just wanted Cassel to do something to get them to respect him. Barron has lost a lot of his memory because of all the work he has been doing but that didn't make me feel anything other than anger toward the way he treated Cassel. Philip just appears to be a bully and out to do whatever helps him get ahead.

I did like the relationship that Cassel has with his grandpa. I also liked seeing the friendships with Sam and Daneca develop. I got the sense that Cassel felt like an outsider for pretty much his entire life and to see him establish some roots at school was important.

I am looking forward to the next book. I want to see how things advance between Cassel and Lila with the way things were left off. Also, I need for him to get away from his family. They only seem to make things worse for him and I get the sense that he sees this but because they are family feels like he needs to help/be with them.

Full review to come.

The Hollow Queen by Sherry Ficklin is the fifth book in The Stolen Empire series and if you haven’t read the others yet, you are missing out! First, the covers are amazing. Second, these books take a period of history that I haven’t seen a lot in YA and Ficklin makes it intriguing with both her writing and the overall plot.

This book focuses on Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. When her parents die, Elizabeth finds herself unprotected and on her own to face those that want the power of the throne. When the Supreme Council crowns her half-nephew instead of her, Elizabeth is left with no title and no finery with the intent to humiliate her. And when she is directed to go to Menshikov Palace to serve the Imperial Majesty, she goes. The thing is, Elizabeth is smart and is willing to bide her time in order to protect herself. Knowing that she will have to show her support, she goes willingly to swear fealty, but she will never deny her lineage and what she feels is her destiny. Add to that the fact that she believes her mother’s death was not natural, and Elizabeth is motivated to play the game she is being forced into to find the person responsible.

A lot of this story is setting up Elizabeth’s background with Peter; her nephew and now the new emperor. It also focuses on Elizabeth diving right into court to find her mother’s murderer. If she can help Peter along the way, she has determined that is what she will do for the good of her people. There was a lot of focus on the relationship between Elizabeth and Peter and while I didn’t love the fact that they were related, I do realize that happened quite often with royalty back then. With that said, I thought Ficklin did a great job of building the relationship between the two and guiding it through the rest of the story. It was clear that early on in the story, Prince Menshikov had all the power and pulled all the strings via Peter but by helping Peter to establish himself as a true ruler and be a true guide to him, Elizabeth was able to pull some of that power away from Menshikov and gain a great deal of influence.

The politics and deals made at court are a big part of this book as well and when the unthinkable happens, Elizabeth must stand up and do what she feels is right. Even if the council won’t see things from her perspective. I’ll be curious to see what happens next in this series with the way this book wrapped up. I can’t say much more here as I don’t want to ruin any of the story for you. Just know that if you like historical fiction that centers on politics and romance, you will want to pick this one up. I recommend checking out the other books in the series as well.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy in exchange for an honest review.