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Tricia Levenseller: The Shadows Between Us

 This was another book we read for our book club.

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller follows the independent and murderess Alessandra. Alessandra has been overlooked her entire life, including by her first love, Hector. But, Alessandra has a plan to change everything: convince the Shadow King to fall in love with her, then kill him and take his throne. As she moves to the palace and gets knee-deep in the intrigue, things change. Will Alessandra go through with her cunning plan, or will she give in to her heart and marry the most powerful man in the world?

Truthfully, I desperately wanted to like this book, but I just... didn't. It was shockingly sappy and incredibly predictable. I had Alessandra pegged from the very start. She wasn't going to kill the Shadow King, and she was certainly going to fall in love with him. While the journey to get there wasn't as obvious, I knew the outcome from the very start. Murdering Hector and the subsequent discovery of his body certainly complicated things. There wasn't enough intrigue and the characters were flat and unoriginal. I did like the magical concept behind the king's power, but it was underdeveloped and poorly executed. In all, I felt that this book had so much potential that it really didn't live up to, and the whole thing felt cliche. To be honest, I almost wished Alessandra would just kill the king, and prove to be just as ruthless as she tries to make us believe.

The Shadow King was also cliche. He wants everyone to see him as ruthless, but his displays of temper and power are childish. His desire to conquer the world feels like he wants to appear to be this power-hungry bad-a, but he'd rather play with his dog and sit in the rose garden than go to meetings. It was obvious he was going to go for Alessandra from the start as if she knew the magic formula to get his attention.

Almost all of the conflicts in this book were resolved much too easily. Alessandra had a convenient out for every problem in the whole book. Oh, this other guy you're not interested in is chasing you? You find out he's actually a bandit causing major problems and can get him arrested. Oh, these two friends of yours don't want to get married? Sure, set the obnoxious fiancee up with the bandit you don't like, how convenient. Oh, you killed your ex-boyfriend, I pardon you. But you wanted to kill me?! How dare you! Oh, you made it back in time to find the villain monologuing instead of killing his brother, again, too convenient. There was no failure for Alessandra. She got everything she wanted, and even the big failure didn't feel desperate or bad enough, because within a few pages it was resolved.

Overall, I didn't enjoy this book really all that much. The author has a great writing style, and I liked the witty main character. I wished this book had been less cliche and had more depth to it.

I rated it ⭐⭐



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