Quick Synopsis – A loose King Arthur retelling where Veyka is an elemental fae taking over a throne she does not want and betrothed to the Brutal Prince, the strongest terrestrial fae in millennia. Sexy times and mystery solving ensues.

Song This Reminds Me Of – What Was I Made For – Billie Eilish

Release Date – October 1, 2023

Spicy Rating – 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Overall Rating – 3 out of 5 ⭐

Trigger Warnings – Child abuse (not graphic, but mentioned in flashbacks), body horror, and sexual abuse.

Review – This story, y’all, it was a little all over the place. I really hate calling it a King Arthur retelling because it’s more like Arthurian legends were the base, and everything else was an original invention. I wish the publishing world would stop saying “retelling” about everything when clearly a book was just inspired by source material.

Veyka Pendragon is an invention of the author and the twin to Arthur Pendragon. Both are elemental fae, and for years they were separated by their cruel mother, Igraine. After the death of the King, Arthur is set to become the next High King and to marry a terrestrial fae (Gwen). His marriage will solidify the truce between elementals and terrestrial. However, Arthur is quickly assassinated, and now Veyka is thrust into the role of Queen.

Arran Earthborn has been selected to be her terrestrial partner. The two are fire and ice. Where she sees a brutal warrior, he sees a selfish brat. Of course, all isn’t what it seems, and even though they claim to hate each other, neither can resist the pull towards each other.

This book was very transparent, but a fun read. I thought the plot mostly made sense, though the subplot about the plague in the human world and whatever is going on in Gawaen’s lands with children going missing were pretty much abandoned. I didn’t think it was really necessary to introduce another bad guy. The author could have just stuck with the main plot of finding out who killed Arthur. It also would have been way more interesting for Veyka to be researching her powers instead of insisting there was nothing there.

Also, this book was chef’s kiss spicy. Thank you to Emberly for writing sex scenes that use the actual names of anatomy and for having a female character very clearly written as plus-sized. I very much enjoyed that.

I did find a lot of the passages to be repeated over and over. Multiple times, Veyka would be thinking of talking to Arran only to tell herself she couldn’t divulge any secrets and that she was running away. Over and over the same plot points, it was really annoying and kind of made me worried that characters were dumb.

While I did have issues with this book, I will be reading on to the next in the series. Hopefully, it covers the plot holes and does more to talk about void and ethereal magic.

Thanks NetGalley and Emberly Ash for the ARC!