lazthewhale's Reviews (667)

I have thoughts about this one. Like many, I was pretty excited about the premise of this one but I found that the execution lacking. I feel like in some areas Alessandra lacked depth.

Like I know throughout the whole book it's like "she killed for love", but I don't think her backstory provided enough evidence that she would have been a killer, would have had a reason to have a knife on her all time, and would have the physical and mental strength to pull off a murder. 
Yes she's smart and savvy, and didn't have the greatest childhood but she feels like more of a psychopath that an passionate killer. For example, she never needed friends, kept everybody at arms length and hated her sister (even though technically speaking, I don'  think her sister did anything wrong??) and had her only and first friends at court.
I also just couldn't connect the dots of why she needed to control the entire kingdom?!? I get she's power hungry, and probably never felt like she's had any, but I felt that it was a tad extreme to jump to "I've killed because a man scorned me and now I must kill to rule the entire kingdom!!!" Still don't know why the next logical step was to rule over everybody.

I mainly wanted more backstory and for her character to be a bit more believable with her motivation and reasoning. Some of her actions just felt out of character. And by the end of it, she didnt even feel like the same person, but like, not in a good way. I never got the satisfaction of "oohhh this is why she's doing all this." 

And as a side note: the narrator for the audiobook, while good, used volume as a way to differentiate characters so half the time I couldn't understand what Kallias was saying because she spoke deeply and quietly, and if I turned it up louder, the rest of the book was too loud.