Language: PG-13 (40 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content:PG-13 (passionate kissing, body parts referred, lovers mentioned ; Violence: PG-13 (blood and deaths mentioned)
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - ADVISABLE
AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH
18yo Alessandra has three goals in life: 1) seduce Kallias, the Shadow King, 2) marry the Shadow King, 3) kill the shadow king and rule on her own. Fortunately, she’s no stranger to murder, having killed a previous lover who confessed he no longer loved her. Unfortunately, the Shadow King is notoriously unimpressed by women trying to court him, and he doesn’t allow anyone to touch him or the smokey shadows that surround his body. So when the brooding, 19yo king asks Alessandra if she’ll enter a fake engagement with him to convince people that he’s taken, Alessandra must use all her feminine wiles to both appear uninterested and force him to fall in love with her. However, Alessandra and the king soon realize they may have met their match in the other’s conniving and manipulative plans.
I ate this book up. It was a quick and easy read, and Alessandra is the sort of villainous protagonist that you love. She's cunning and spunky, but I found myself absolutely rooting for her. She works to convince the court that women deserve voices and the same privileges that men have which is fascinating to observe play out in a fantastical, medieval setting. Although she's extremely sexual, the scenes are never described explicitly, and I was rather impressed that you could have such a sensual main character that still somehow kept it "clean." Overall, it's a delight to see two villains face off in trying to out-smart the other. Since this is a made-up world, the ethnicities aren't clear, but Alessandra and Kallias are described as darkly tanned. Other characters range in skin color, and the court openly accepts LGBTQ+ in their ranks.
Lisa J HS ELA Teacher
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