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Title: Protect the Prince
Author: Jennifer Estep
Sub-genre: Fantasy
Okay. So I snagged a copy of Kill the Queen, the first book in this series, at RWA last summer. If you aren’t familiar with RWA (currently in a state of wtf-ery) it’s the Romance Writers of America and is a writer’s association for anyone who writes romance. Last year was my first time going to the RWA conference (this year would have been my second until first they and then the world turned into a dumpster fire), and one of the highlights was so. many. free. books. Seriously, it’s probably the thing I’ll miss the most about not going this year (people are cool and all, but books really give me life). ANYWAY. Long story short, I picked up Kill the Queen at RWA and read it thinking I was getting a fantasy romance, but lo and behold, there was zero kissing. And no real HEA or HFN. Boo. But, I am so desperate for fantasy these days, I figured I would give the sequel a shot. And there’s kissing, so yay!
Everleigh has officially taken the throne after defeating her murderous cousin in a death match. She’s way far behind on the ruling stuff because she was never supposed to be queen. But one of her first tasks as queen is to visit her rival country to make a treaty. Bellona (Evie’s country) needs to team up with Andvari (hottie Sullivan’s country) in order to defeat the bad guys. Only problem is the Andvari prince was killed by Evie’s murderous cousin and so they’re not supes happy with Bellonans in general. But Evie does her best to show she can be trusted, and does a fair amount of ass kicking the bad guys, resulting in a treaty with Andvari. And Sullivan manages to sort of get over most of his issues so the two can finally bone.
Alright. So there is so much I love about this book (that I also liked in the first one). I like the world building, I like the characters, I like the magic system. All good. I still wanted more romance, but I was happy with the direction things took in this book and was excited to see some action on the page. The conflict of this book wasn’t as intriguing as the first, and I saw the “twist” coming pretty early (is this a writer thing?). All of that I could live with.
Except. This is such a weird thing (also maybe a writer thing), but I noticed it in both of these books which leads me to believe it’s a common thing with Jennifer. She uses the phrase “and more” so. many. times. I noticed it less in this book than in the first one, but it still stood out to be me as being overused and it is like such a glaring no-no to me. Just delete the phrase or tell me what the more is. So simple.
All that being said, I did go ahead and order the third book because I want to see how this all ends. I hope book three will punch up the conflict and romance and ease off the and more.
Overall Rating: 4 stars