And I Darken by Kiersten White

NO ONE EXPECTS A PRINCESS TO BE BRUTAL. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.

4 stars.
It was fun to read. ( I can't think of much else to say woops)

“On our wedding night," she said, "I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.”

I loved the beginning of the book, started getting quite bored when Mehmed stepped into the picture and got into it again at the very end. I have no qualms with the writing style, nor Lada and Radu as characters. Mehmed, is another story. Virtually any other male character is more interesting than “his highness” so I was not sold at all on the fact that both siblings were madly in love with him and happy to die for him at any moment. I felt that both of them became watered-down versions of themselves when they were around him and I didn't like that he was so central to the story.

I've always had a bit of a thing for Dracula, and by extension Vlad Tepes, but I think this story was made more powerful by the change of making Vlad the Impaler a woman, with all the additional trauma, struggles, complications, and twists that come with that choice.

Lada is presented as complicated, brutal, emotionally closed off, vindictive, and just as dangerous as any man. Good for her. ;)

In all seriousness, I love that she is presented in all her complex glory, a character capable of making heartrendingly bad decisions, one who makes a conscious decision not to love so much that she has too much to lose, thus insuring she won't ever hold on to anything that really matters.

4.25/5 stars “Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.” I suck. I really do. I read this book two weeks ago, and only now am I sitting down to review it. My mind is starting to blank on small details. I already am horrible at writing reviews when I remember everything. Let's give this a try though. And I Darken is about Lada, who is a female version of Vlad the Impaler (aka a very cruel man from about the 1400s) and her brother Radu. The very first scene of this book is Lada's birth, and the very last is when Lada's about eighteen years old. It's an unusual move in YA, but it works so beautifully here. Instead of being told Lada's backstory, and why she is the person she is, we are shown everything that has shaped her. We follow Lada as she and her brother are practically abandoned by her to be raised in a country that isn't there own for reasons that are too intricate to explain in just a sentence. There so much drive for Lada, and [a:Kiersten White 3027554 Kiersten White https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1254205920p2/3027554.jpg] does a excellent job displaying it through her words. Going into this book, I was expecting two things: it was a historical fantasy book and it's about a gender-bent Vlad the Imapler. Historical? Yes. Fantasy? No. There has been so many historical fantasy retellings that have come out the past year (from [b:My Lady Jane 22840421 My Lady Jane Cynthia Hand https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1444923765s/22840421.jpg 42397220] to [b:Legacy of Kings 23569428 Legacy of Kings (Blood of Gods and Royals, #1) Eleanor Herman https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1425592379s/23569428.jpg 43167918]) that I just assumed this was in the category too. Now, I didn't know who Vlad the Impaler was. I think that I maybe have heard the name before, but I couldn't tell you when and where. The Ottoman Empire is one of those things I knew had existed, but never learned about. To be honest, that's the best way to go into this story. If I had known even the basics about Vlad, then I would have been trying to compare every little thing to history. My one, main problem with this book: it's in third person, why is the title in first person? “And She Darkens” would make much more sense. Am I the only person in this world who is annoyed by this so much? Probably. Lada. Lada didn't live up to my expectations. Even though I got exactly what I went in for: a strong, independent, brutal warrior, I was beyond disappointed. I love characters to be complex, and to me she wasn't. She's a strong character, yes, but I wanted there to be more to her than just violence. I understand that her entire world is violence, and she was pretty much born that way, but it also created a disconnect between me as a reader and her as the protagonists. Radu. My favorite character by far. Every time the book was focusing on Lada's POV, I longed to return to him. The first part of the book, I loved him because he was too precious for this world. Then he grew up and became this manipulative teenager and my love soared. He is such a complex character, such an opposite of Lada. I am hoping we get to see even more of him in the next book. Mehmed My feelings about him are in his name. Meh. I'm not sure how I feel about him just yet, mainly because I feel like there's something about him Keirsten White hasn't shown us yet. And I Darken was an insane read, quite unlike anything I have read before. Though technically almost everything that happens in the book has already happened in real life, I still found myself unsure of what would come next. When the second book comes out next year, I'll definitely be picking it up.