Series Review: The Queen's Secret Duology

     To celebrate the publication of The Queen’s Secret by Melissa de la Cruz on March 2nd, I have decided to post a review of both books in the duology. Special thank you to Penguin Teen for an ARC of The Queen’s Secret in exchange for my honest opinion!

Book 1: The Queen’s Assassin

Fans of YA fantasy, this book is for you! This book was a great read! I'll be honest: I predicted the major plot twist that happens at the end after reading Chapter 1... so while I felt very satisfied that I guessed correctly, I didn't get the major shock factor that de la Cruz was probably hoping I’d experience (but maybe we can chalk up my accurate prediction to me being an adult who's read WAY too many YA novels to count). That being said, I still really enjoyed this book. The first few chapters take a bit to get through because it’s a lot of world building, but by the middle of the book I was pretty interested to see where the plot would go. The best part of this novel was the ending, which left you wanting more and eager to see what would happen to Shadow and Cal. For my first Melissa de la Cruz story, I was not disappointed and I cannot wait to start reading the sequel!
Rating:  ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 

The Queen’s Secret

*SPOILER WARNING*
If I’m being honest, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I was hoping to. This book seemed too focused on Lilac and Cal’s forbidden romance that the rest of the plot felt cast aside and rushed at the end. And the whole point to Cal’s blood oath from the first book seems irrelevant until the very end of book two. Another thing I was disappointed with was the character development. In The Queen’s Assassin, most of the plot rests on Shadow/Lilac and Cal so the character development wasn’t really an issue. However, in The Queen’s Secret, there are many more characters with semi-prominent roles in the plot that barely get any development or enhancement. While I love a good fantasy/romance book. I felt that the plot got sacrificed for the sake of the romantic elements that weren’t even all the satisfying in the end. So while I was not disappointed with the first book in this duology, I was a little disappointed with this one.
Rating:  ⭐ ⭐ 

Overall: Maybe it’s because I’ve read my fair share of fantasy books or because I’m *technically* not the target demographic for this duology, but i just thought it was okay. If you’re a hardcore YA fantasy/romance lover then I think this duology is definitely worth checking out, but I think that there are other series out there that are more appealing and enthralling.
Rating:  ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 

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