First of all…
Yes, I discovered this author via BookTok.
A ton of my friends encouraged me to check out Book Tok and since I was already on TikTok, I decided to check it out.
Please, no politics and raging in my comments, social media constantly has backlash from people who dislike certain platforms and I’m old enough to remember the rise and fall of many of them. Suffice, anything and everything can be exploited for attention/misdirection or to earn a buck, the responsibility falls on you to do your research and participate with moderation and intelligence.
SO!
The Ever King by LJ Andrews has a fantastic book trailer that caught my attention. And I devoured that book in two days only to discover it had a major cliffhanger at the end. Which.. fair. It’s a marketing strategy and it worked well on me since I went out and grabbed Curse of Shadows and Thorns by the same author whilst waiting for the next book.
Which is a roundabout way of saying how I stumbled into the Broken Kingdoms Series, but there you have it. The books are on Kindle Unlimited, which is good because I have a husband who loves me and wants me to be able to read at my own pace (often quite fast) so we have a Kindle Unlimited account.
Say what you want about Amazon, Kindle Unlimited is brilliant. One price every month and I have access to millions of titles? This. Saves. Me. Heartache. And it makes authors money who would otherwise have been passed over because my book budget would only allow for X amount of novels that month.
Anyway, Curse of Shadows and Thorns is the introduction to the Broken Kingdoms series by LJ Andrews and I adored this story. Yes, it’s adult. So walk in with your eyes open. Yes, it’s romance. It’s Vikings meet Fae, full of wonder and hope and tragedy.
Now, I will admit that I saw the twist coming in Book 3. Yes, there are tropes and some predictable elements by the time you hit books 4 and 5, but at the end of the day… I had so much fun reading them.
Just… fun.
And really, as much as I love books that open my heart and mind to other cultures and ways of life, sometimes you just want a girl to see the good man beneath the monstrous exterior, and for love to conquer all the ugliness that came before it.
Happy reading, everyone.
AJMaguire - Author 