Rori

I bought the American release of this book in November 2024 because I didn't want to wait until February to get the Australian release.. and here I am... finishing it in September, 2025. A feat only achievable by me as I'm yet to finish another book I started in 2016 🤭

Anyway, onto this book.

Truly, I have never read a book so scared of how the ending may go. HOW was Tasha Suri going to wrap this thang up?! Beautifully. That's how. And heartbreakingly as all good endings are.

I cannot get over how engrossing Suri's Burning Kingdom is (only just clocked why it's called Burning Kingdom lol). I constantly rave about the world building and the depth of the characters, even minor side characters with one chapter or no chapter at all! An incredible talent.

This one is for Tasha... PLEASE JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER, I BEG YOU!!!!!!!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this dark fairytale book! Some of the writing is so poetically beautiful that it drove me to rant my friends ears off countless times and it is also at times hysterically funny! The characters are lovable beyond belief and the main character, Marra, is just so relatable with her commentary (it's not 1st person but you know what I mean). 100% recommend for classic fairytale vibes with a side of creepy and funny antics!

Once again, another beautifully written book by Tasha Suri with vibrant world building and rich characters. Suri continued on her trajectory of writing one of the most captivating, heart-warming, and gut-wrenching stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I wish I could come up with smarter words to describe this sequel but having just finished the book, my head is screaming “AAHHHHHHH GIVE ME THE NEXT BOOK!!” while my heart sits in the corner and cries.

A bit slow, felt like the author was trying to draw it out far too long instead of making up more plot. But I liked the main character and the story overall.

While I don't remember much of the first book, I remember enjoying it enough to be annoyed I had to wait for the sequel. However, upon reading the first few chapters I started to think maybe I had suffered a head injury to think it was fun as this book was starting to seem not good at all. Thankfully, it started to pick up around the 30-40% mark and I started enjoying myself. While still not a ground-breaking piece of writing, I like Ciccarelli's lore building and characters. The story had relatively good pacing, I just wish the ending and other characters were a bit more fleshed out.

I fear this book is another victim of publisher's pumping out the same stories, tropes, and "romantasy" writing. I don't remember the first book being this cliche and for a lack of a better word "cringey" in it's writing but maybe I'm misremembering it or I was kinder back then. And as previously hinted at, the ending was also so incredibly rushed. Very "and then the bad person was defeated and they all lived happily ever after, goodbye!"

I still had a good time, truly. It is a fun read! The first part of my review reads quite harsh but I'm just so sick of good concepts being ruined by predictable twists, tropes, trying to emulate the same angst as other series, and all because of capitalism. Bring back authors taking ages to bring out the next book! It was horrible but I'd prefer it over this!