The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. PearsonSeries: The Remnant Chronicles #1
Published by: Henry Holt and Co. on July 15, 2014
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 492
Source: NetGalley
Book Details
Rating: ★★★★½
In this timeless new trilogy about love and sacrifice, a princess must find her place in a reborn world.
In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.
On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assasin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.
Overall, I adored The Kiss of Deception! The idea of the book is just so fabulous. A princess has an arranged marriage with the prince, but she’s never even met the guy so she certainly doesn’t love him, so she runs away. The prince sets out to find her, doesn’t tell her who he is, and View Spoiler »
The best part about this book was easily Lia. She was a total badass! This girl really knows how to stand up for herself (and others). She has no problem getting in a man’s face and telling him off. It was pretty damn epic!
There is a love triangle in this book, but it wasn’t bad. I think that’s because although there were two guys, Lia clearly knew which one she wanted. She cared for both of them, but she knew she liked one more and she made that pretty evident (at least to the reader). And the two guys were really, really interesting. You know one’s the prince and one’s an assassin, but you don’t know which one is which (unless I’m totally retarded and missed something obvious). So although you know a bit more than Lia does (she doesn’t know either of their true “professions”), you’re still kind of in the dark as a reader. It was fun trying to figure out which guy she was actually falling for! View Spoiler »
I have to admit, the last quarter of the book did start to bore me just a little. There’s just tons and tons of traveling and after a while I felt like nothing new was happening. Then the actual ending was kind of a let down for me. I feel like… nothing really happened. There wasn’t any huge build up or climax. It’s like it approached a climax, but ended before it actually got there. That left me a little unsatisfied overall. It suggests that book two should be very interesting (and possibly even avoid second book syndrome!), but I think that’s largely because the end of book one was actually lacking.
And then there’s the side story, which is riddled with bits of magic, politics, and war. It slowly built up as the book progressed, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it all pans out. It almost felt Game of Throne-esque in that combination.
But even so, The Kiss of Deception really excited me! It was a fun book to read and tough to put down (most of the time). Lia stole the spotlight for being such a badass, but I loved the side characters as well. This series is definitely one to watch out for!
The Verdict
Though a whole bunch of traveling in books bores me to tears, this book sound awesome. So excited to read it soon.
Yeah the traveling was kind of lame. But the rest of the book is epic!
YAY I have this book waiting for me to read on Netgalley, and the fact that it’s a four point five-er for you makes me want to bump it up on my TBR 😀
I hope you love it Rosie! 😀
Okay… I’m sold! Gotta add this one to my list. I love the cover too. It’s so cool.
You’re right—the cover is AWESOME!
Wow, this sounds like an extremely amazing book! I can’t wait to get my hands on this! I’m so happy that the MC was relatable and the love story was awesome 🙂
The love story was faaabulous! I’m having withdrawals. I need the next book so I can read more!
Reading this one soon! 😀 Can’t wait!
Yaaay! Be sure to tell me what you think! 😀
I just finished this too. Lia was so amazing and I love her bad-assery too. TEAM RAFE ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!
I totally agree! TEAM RAFE!
Wow, this seems really interesting! I think I may just have to give it a try 🙂
I am so so so excited about this book! Every time I turn around, someone is saying something amazing about it! So glad you enjoyed it!
I loved this book too and I was TOTALLY fooled at the same point that you were. Completely shocked. 🙂
QUITE HONESTLY I was so tempted to click the view spoilers. SO TEMPTED. But I know that one of the best things about this book are the red herrings and how in the dark the readers is…but you have NO IDEA how tempted I was. SO EXCITED to get my copy! (But ugh, have to wait a week. Damn you Amazon)
eeeee now I’m so excited for this one! I read a recent negative review so I was kinda disappointed…the excitement was still there, though. This book is just my TYPE. I got denied in netgalley so it broke my heart huhu I really wanted to get a chance to read this earlier. I must wait patiently now for this book to be released. Just a few more days of suffering.
A negative review will always slip through here and there, but the bulk that I’ve read have been super positive (4 or 5 stars). So don’t get discouraged!! 😉
Glad to hear you ended up enjoying this one! I loved every second of it snd i remember being so worried when i couldnt figure out who the prince and the assassin were. I kept rereading sections and freaking out and thinking i was an idiot till someone ln twitter said it was intentional. LOL.
I absolutely adored this story!! IT was so famn fantastic and one of these books where I just couldn’t put it down and was completely enthralled!
I loved the way the story was told and how we had to figure out who was who! That was the best and … the one she choose:))
SO glad you loved this book. Can’t wait to read it myself.
I got an ARC of the book last summer and gobbled it up! I totally made the same (second spoiler) mistake you did! Which made it that much more exciting for me when I realized the truth! Definitely a great read!