When Auden lost her parents, she was sentenced to a lifetime of beatings and nightmares for reasons she doesn’t understand. Despite that, she’s managed to build a life with her two closest friends who make life worth living. Everything changes when the blood sucking immortals from another kingdom arrive claiming it’s time to take her back with them. It’s also when she learns she’s trading one prison for another, and that the only true thing she’s ever known is the prophecy that’s haunted her every step of the way.
For some reason, I wasn’t expecting this to be a slow-paced story, but I really enjoyed it. We mainly follow Auden as her life gets turned upside down, but we also get rotating POVs of Everette and Azriel along the way. I really enjoyed following Auden and Azriel, but not really Everette. I found he has next to no personality and I really ended up just disliking him the longer I read. I also wish there was more world building early into the story, which would’ve made it easier to get into the story. I just felt more in the dark than Auden was for the first 10 chapters, and she didn’t even fully learn what was going on until toward the end of the book.
I knew there was going to be a love triangle, but I wasn’t expecting to have absolutely no interest in Everette. He and Auden have no romantic chemistry, and their friendship felt super forced. This becomes even more glaringly obvious when Azriel enters the picture because he has excellent chemistry with everyone, and the romantic chemistry between him and Auden is fire. I just couldn’t take the friendship or romance between Auden and Everette seriously, especially as we got deeper into the story and we learned more about the real reason he was there. We kept being told how close their friendship was when it felt forced, and how in lust the two were with each other when that also felt forced.
Despite my issues with the love triangle and lack of world building, I really did enjoy this. I liked a number of the characters and was interested enough in the premise to keep reading even when the world building was lacking. I’m obviously not a fan of the love triangle, so I’m hoping Auden ends up with Azriel because I honestly don’t see a single reason why she’d choose Everette in the end. I don’t want to say too much about the prophecy or who Auden is, but I think it was worth the wait to get some big answers. I’m hoping the next book is more polished than this one, but I did enjoy reading this debut novel from the author.
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