Content Warnings

Graphic violence, gore, adult language, sexual situations

Summary

Tobias Kaya doesn’t care about The Savior. He doesn’t care that She’s the Ruler of the realm or that She purified the land, and he certainly doesn’t care that She’s of age to be married. But when competing for Her hand proves to be his last chance to save his family, he’s forced to make The Savior his priority.

Now Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign’s Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting—and killing—for the chance to rule at The Savior’s side. Instantly his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.

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Review

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

I was pretty interested and excited to read this book because it sounded like a Hunger Games meets The Selection story that I could get behind. Plus, I knew that the author was a pretty well-known Authortuber and has a ton of fans for her writing knowledge and advice. 

However, to say that I was disappointed is a slight understatement. Things in the story start off well enough, with the typical reluctant hero storyline, but there weren’t many other things that I was impressed by in the end. 

First, it was long. Really long. And then it ends incredibly abruptly. I definitely felt a little cheated because of that and may be (definitely) holding onto some resentments about investing the amount of time I did and NOT getting any real sort of resolution. 

Secondly, I’m not a prudish reader by any means and am all for the properly used adult language in whatever context, as long as it makes sense and is done for a purpose. However, this was not the case here. I literally searched the ebook for how many times the f-word, and a couple of c-words were used throughout the book and was not surprised that the totals were staggering. For example, the f-bomb is dropped 182 times and the word “cock” is used 96 times and by every single character (or so it seemed). Because of this, the characters lacked depth, they all sounded the same, and it seemed like a society who literally couldn’t be bothered to come up with words that were different or unique in any way, no matter what the character’s background or place in that society. This might seem nit picky, but for me, it definitely stood out and made things seem like a farcical telling of what a girl thinks boys sound like (similar to the girls have pillow fights at sleepovers type of stereotype).

Lastly, the plot was interesting enough that I wanted to see if the secret that was being kept was what I thought it was and I will hand it to Moreci about the challenges–they were interesting, even when they weren’t that exciting, but some of them were, and it allowed the book to have some high points. 

Overall, I assume that there will be a book two, but I won’t be picking it up. I think that sums up my thoughts succinctly enough.