Author: alisajades

Genre: 'Historical Fiction'

What I liked about this book:

The first chapter of this, though it took place after the story, was fairly well-paced and was enough to make me want to read on. The story itself is an interesting one, though fairly cliche--a prince is arranged to be married to a princess and winds up falling in love with her cousin instead.

What I did NOT like about this book:

The writing here reads like a list. There's very little variety in sentence structure. Theodore did this. Then he did that. Then he ate some breakfast. Then Elena introduced her cousin. It reads really dry, and gives me no feeling for anyone's personality.

Which, to add, nobody has any. The prose head hops so bad I can't get a feel for any of them, because the text winds up super far away from the characters. The author needs to pare it back and stick with one third person point of view. Right now it's in a weird sort of omniscient that doesn't flow well.

My third, and perhaps largest, problem with this is that it's labeled historical fiction, but the kingdoms being discussed don't exist and never did. There are plenty of monarchies to pick from in Europe. Research one, write a story about it. Otherwise, label your story as fantasy, as it should be.

Otherwise, this bored me.

Overall:

Eh.

Rating:

4/10. It was honestly just kind of boring and drab, and I don't have anything to say about it. I'll probably have forgotten about it completely by the end of the week.