This historical fiction novel follows Vlad, a second-born prince who resents his older brother, and his best friend/cousin Andrei. Vlad knows that he loves Ilona from the moment he sets eyes on her but she is wary about her feelings for him. When she is betrothed to his brother, Vlad is infuriated. Vlad LOVES Ilona, his brother never will. He would do anything to be able to marry her.
I believe that the character Vlad is inspired by the historical figure Vlad the Impaler, and the whole story is basically seeing his descent into madness. He starts the book a bit unhinged, accidentally seriously injuring his friend Andrei. He slowly becomes more and more violent and vicious throughout the story as he wants more and more of what the other characters had. I wish that this descent had been more…psychologically “mad” and less spoiled brat “tantrum.” He had no real reason for loving Ilona, he literally just saw her and decided to obsess over her. He wasn’t really qualified to rule a kingdom, he just wanted to be viewed as better than his brother. Don’t get me wrong, seeing some of the crazy stuff he did was definitely the height of the story for me. I just wish he had a better reason to be acting in those ways.
Ilona was pretty much a blank-slate character. She didn’t seem to have that many aspirations for herself, but she was smart enough to know from the beginning that Vlad may not be in her best romantic interests. Even though she entertains his courtship from time to time, I don’t think that she ever truly let her guard down fully around him. Not like she did with Andrei. I feel like I would have liked her more if I had more time to get to know her outside of her crazy relationship with Vlad.
Andrei was definitely my favorite character but he simply did not receive enough screen time. Most of his actions were either told from the POV of Vlad who is not a reliable storyteller in this book, or Ilona. I wish I had more time to get to know him and see his true motives aside from what others thought his motives were.
Overall, this book was forgettable to me and definitely didn’t meet my expectations. I wish that this book had gone through another round of edits to tighten up the plot and make the characters more powerful. I won’t give up on this author though as this is a debut novel, and I have hope that they may be able to turn things around in the next book they release.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 books.
