Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright

TL;DR: A big miss for me that’s neither dark or romantic (per the pitch line)
Source: NetGalley! Thank you so, so much!

Plot: Shan kills her father (the first chapter) and the book slowly slides into blushing in library corners.
Characters: Honestly I didn’t really connect to anyone here.
Setting: A dark city with a dingy port is what I remember and this book took me two weeks to read.
Fantasy: Almost vampires, but not quite. This one is definitely set in a fantasy world but hangs mostly on the ‘politics’ than the fantasy or fantastical bits.

Thoughts:

What a disappointment. This one really threw me into a slump. This is described (from the Amazon description)as a ‘a dark romantic fantasy’ with a ‘villainous and bloodthirsty’ heroine – both of this things I’d say are quite untrue. If this is dark, I clearly live in a world of pastels and rainbows with talking ponies. Shan the not so bloodthirsty or villainous character, kills her father in the first chapter of the book and proceeds to attempt to take his place as head of her household and aims for the position of spymaster. To get the Not-A-Vampire King’s attention she finds the last heir to his household and the story goes from there.

Sure there are murders, blood, and political backstabbing and mechanics but it’s all cut at the knees with these downright nice and kind characters. Shan, Sam, and Isaac blush and date their way through the story. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled on truly darker toned books with actually murderous and mad characters but these three were downright lovely to one another for most of the book. At times when they’d clash there were typically apologizes all around. The twists were not at all that twisty and I had to force my way through this one.

There were attributes here that had some promise. I liked the ideas of the system and world, I liked the setup, and I liked some of the things that happened. Perhaps if the pitching and sell on this had been appropriate I would have gone in with appropriate expectations and would not have been so disappointed. I’ll try K.M. Enright again, but I refuse to believe any pitch on any future books of theirs.

A very low 3 out of 5 stars.