I wanted to like this so bad. I really really tried to like it, y’all.
The Queen’s Assassin follows Shadow of the Honey Glade, whose mother is forcing her to become a lady of the court when all she wants is to be an assassin. She finds an opportunity for escape when fate throws her in the path of Caledon Holt, the infamous queen’s assassin who is very good at his job. She figures if she can get him to apprentice her, her mother will have to allow her in as a permanent assassin in the Hearthstone Guild. So she helps Caledon and teams up with him on his mission from the queen - but things start to get a lot more complicated, and they must fight to save much more than they bargained for, even as they fight their growing feelings for each other.
This book was sooo… infuriatingly amateur. Which honestly doesn’t make sense to me, because the writing itself was lyrical and perfect for a fantasy. But all of the other parts of writing - plot, characters, etc - are so poorly executed and it hurts. The characters seem to change personalities every chapter, which is annoying on its own, but it also makes the romance a big hot mess. There is supposed to be drama in their forbidden romance, except nothing they say or do makes any sense. The only way I know how to describe this book is that Melissa de la Cruz took a bunch of tropes and events/moments that readers like and smushed them all together, and then put a little bit in between to fuse them together… but the moments she smushed together come from a variety of books and stories with characters who are totally different, so putting them all together made the whole story choppy and inconsistent.
And don’t let me forget the plot twist. Not only was it extremely dang predictable, but it made absolutely no sense. I had the theory at the very beginning of the book. But then, ironically, I dismissed it because there were already too many holes to the theory. More evidence later, I was hoping that I was wrong because that would be a horrible, horrible plot twist.
But alas, I was correct. And the main character’s explanation of the plot twist was “oh, I liked to think ____ is my reality when actually *plot twist* is true and I just don’t think about it ever, that’s why I never mentioned it in my inner dialogue.”
Excuse me, what??
It was horrible. SOOOO yeah. I tried. I mean, this book sounds like the perfect dang book for me. But everything was so freaking flat, and I lost count of how many times I rolled my eyes and tried not to tear my hair out because I was so annoyed. And my average rating on Goodreads is 4.11 stars - I’m pretty easily pleased.
I want to thank BookishFirst and Penguin Teen for gifting me an advanced copy of this book; all opinions are my own.
The Queen’s Assassin follows Shadow of the Honey Glade, whose mother is forcing her to become a lady of the court when all she wants is to be an assassin. She finds an opportunity for escape when fate throws her in the path of Caledon Holt, the infamous queen’s assassin who is very good at his job. She figures if she can get him to apprentice her, her mother will have to allow her in as a permanent assassin in the Hearthstone Guild. So she helps Caledon and teams up with him on his mission from the queen - but things start to get a lot more complicated, and they must fight to save much more than they bargained for, even as they fight their growing feelings for each other.
This book was sooo… infuriatingly amateur. Which honestly doesn’t make sense to me, because the writing itself was lyrical and perfect for a fantasy. But all of the other parts of writing - plot, characters, etc - are so poorly executed and it hurts. The characters seem to change personalities every chapter, which is annoying on its own, but it also makes the romance a big hot mess. There is supposed to be drama in their forbidden romance, except nothing they say or do makes any sense. The only way I know how to describe this book is that Melissa de la Cruz took a bunch of tropes and events/moments that readers like and smushed them all together, and then put a little bit in between to fuse them together… but the moments she smushed together come from a variety of books and stories with characters who are totally different, so putting them all together made the whole story choppy and inconsistent.
And don’t let me forget the plot twist. Not only was it extremely dang predictable, but it made absolutely no sense. I had the theory at the very beginning of the book. But then, ironically, I dismissed it because there were already too many holes to the theory. More evidence later, I was hoping that I was wrong because that would be a horrible, horrible plot twist.
But alas, I was correct. And the main character’s explanation of the plot twist was “oh, I liked to think ____ is my reality when actually *plot twist* is true and I just don’t think about it ever, that’s why I never mentioned it in my inner dialogue.”
Excuse me, what??
It was horrible. SOOOO yeah. I tried. I mean, this book sounds like the perfect dang book for me. But everything was so freaking flat, and I lost count of how many times I rolled my eyes and tried not to tear my hair out because I was so annoyed. And my average rating on Goodreads is 4.11 stars - I’m pretty easily pleased.
I want to thank BookishFirst and Penguin Teen for gifting me an advanced copy of this book; all opinions are my own.