My Rating: ★ ★ 1/4
Trigger warning for
this book: mention of miscarriage
When I heard that
Kiera Cass was releasing another romance book, I was incredibly ecstatic over
the news and over the moon. As The Selection is one of my all-time
favorite series, and I also really enjoyed The Siren, I honestly couldn’t
imagine that whatever she was going to release into the world would ever disappoint
me. Sadly, I was proven wrong on that front.
The Betrothed is not an entirely terrible book nor do I hate
it. It’s okay. But unfortunately, that’s basically as far as my positive
thoughts on this book reach (with a couple of exceptions). This book was just
that – okay, and nothing more.
The setup of The
Betrothed is actually something that I feel incredibly drawn to read about:
a royal court, some steamy (forbidden) romance and some political conflict added
into the mix (which is what made The Selection so addictive). What more
can a girl want? Sadly, nothing about the characters, the plot nor any of the
conflict that took place in The Betrothed gripped my interest. In fact, I
felt quite bored reading this book. Granted, there was a royal court and
some drama here and there; but there was minimal to no steamy romance,
and the political conflict also fell flat and didn’t feel threatening up until
the very last portion of the book.
Our main character, Hollis
Brite, is a Lady who lives with her parents in the royal court in Coroa
(its similarity in name to Corona is wildly ironic, in my opinion). She
has been flirting with King Jameson, who is allegedly looking for a new wife
and she seems to be the one he has his eye on. However, as the plot unfolds,
she finds herself drawn to another man and is left in an unfortunately complicated
situation. While this plot sounds like it should be chock-full of stolen
kisses, steamy sex/kissing scenes, a lot of emotional and romantic drama and a powerful
lead, it really wasn’t any of those things. There were a couple of kisses here
and there, a lot of internal conflict Hollis went through and virtually zero
chemistry between the characters. Hollis herself was also an incredibly bland character.
She wasn’t really bad, but she also didn’t really have any qualities that made
her a worthwhile protagonist. In comparison to America (from The Selection),
she felt uninspiring, flat, two-dimensional and didn’t have much of a strong
personality or opinion. On a positive note, she does end up having a
tiny bit of character growth when she eventually realizes that her relationship
with Jameson was quite one-sided and manipulative, but I don’t think this was
developed in a realistic way.
More than that, the
relationship between two of our main characters, Hollis and Delia Grace, was
just atrocious. Even when you take into consideration some of the scheming and
backstabbing that might go on in these kinds of royal courts, Delia Grace
really didn’t seem to care for Hollis. While I think that Hollis also didn’t
really do her best in the friendship department with her, Delia Grace outright
ended up being a manipulative bitch and generally uncaring when it came to Hollis.
It became clear that when given the choice between Hollis’ wellbeing and happiness
and her own reputation and elevation in the court, she would choose the latter.
While this is understandable to a certain extent considering her background and
her family’s reputation, this still doesn’t excuse her behavior or make her any
less of a bitch in my opinion.
The thing that kind of
saved this book for me is the relationship that began to blossom between Hollis
and Queen Valentina. Valentina seemed like a much more nuanced character and I
loved all of the scenes where Hollis and Valentina interacted with one another.
Kiera Cass, in case you might be reading this, if you would ever end up making
a spin-off series with Queen Valentine as the main protagonist, or even want to
write the second book from her POV, I’d totally be down for that. She was a
great character that honestly deserves the best in her life. I genuinely hope
her ending will be happy.
The romance between
Hollis and Silas just also did not feel like it evolved in a natural or
convincing way. One chapter Hollis is basically fawning over Jameson and how
she’ll be queen, and the next she suddenly wants nothing to do with getting a
crown and is kissing Silas? I really just don’t see that happening. I definitely
believe that Hollis and Silas would have made for a great couple, but
unfortunately their relationship just wasn’t really developed in a that it
deserved to be and as a consequence they lacked any sort of chemistry.
The plot did end up picking
up towards the end of the book, but the ending unfortunately felt incredibly
rushed. There was also a rather big plot twist that took place within the very
last chapters of this novel which I don’t believe added anything to the story
besides some sort of shock value. Now, I’m not saying that that is why Kiera
Cass wrote this ending or this plot twist. For all I know – and I believe her
to be a good writer and so I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt – she had good
reasons for adding in this plot point and felt like it would tug the
heartstrings of the reader since she believed it to be of emotional value.
Unfortunately, if these thoughts of an author are not accurately or properly
transferred into their writing, a reader is left to guess at the significance
of a scene or a plot point and only have the work to judge. And unfortunately,
I don’t believe that the plot and ending of this book felt well thought out or meaningful
as a reader.
I will be picking up
the second book in the series. As for my hopes for this series, I would love to
see Hollis either travelling to meeting people from the other areas of this
world that are presented on the map at the front of this book. As for what will
happen or be revealed in the next book, (SPOILER WARNING) I’m genuinely convinced that
Silas was not killed in the attack. For some reason, I also kind of feel like
Hollis will end up with Jameson. Anyone else feel like this?
There
are also a couple of hints here and there that in my opinion lead me to believe
that perhaps Hollis herself is an illegitimate child of her mother, since she
is often described as having hair that is blonder than normal and having an
appearance that is similar to that of an Isolten. Maybe that is a far-reaching
speculation, who knows? But it would definitely add some flavor to this series
that this book did not exactly bring to the table.
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