Check out my reviews of the other books I’ve read by Levenseller:

Daughter of the Pirate King

Daughter of the Siren Queen

This book was marketed as a Slytherin romance, and I don’t think it could have been described any better. This book allows us to see the other side of classic stories. Usually, we’d watch the pure-hearted servant girl or a strong warrior go to fight for what’s right. There, we’d see them encounter the evil boy-king and a sexually empowered girl who has too many schemes going. We’d see them as the villains.

Four Stars

This book doesn’t show Alessandra and Kallias (the Shadow King) as heroes, but it does show their desires, flaws, and their stories. It was a super refreshing story. I loved how it was something I hadn’t read before. I felt the desire for them to be redeemable, but I also wanted them to be true to who they are, and they did that.

Alessandra is an arrogant and power-hungry girl. She gets easily bored, and she knows how to manipulate people to get what she wants. Alessandra was also a very empowering female character to read. She owns her body in a way that I felt was encouraging to female readers. Levenseller does a fantastic job of creating strong female characters that I want to follow because of their incredible self-confidence. It’s refreshing and exciting.

This a castle politics book as I have never seen one before. We see revolutions smothered–which was very strange to read from the “villain” perspective. In their case, they aren’t the villains, and I loved getting to see the dynamic quality of these situations we often don’t get to know since we’re so busy cheering on the “good guys.”

The themes in the book made it such an enjoyable read. All characters desire and appreciate love, acceptance, being vulnerable, and family, whether they are classically “good” or not. Levenseller humanized these classical “villains” and made them lovable. I wish there was another book!

Getting to see two “Slytherins” live out their lives in pursuit of their acceptance, and their dreams were an excellent way to spend quarantine. The book was definitely worth the wait and lived up to the reviews.

I continue to be on the lookout for more books by Levenseller.