The Reluctant Queen by Sarah Beth Durst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong language, Implied sexual relationships


Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow . . .
And those spirits want to kill you.
It’s the first lesson that every Renthian learns.

It took we a while to get back to this series, even though I enjoyed the first book. Because of that, I wasn't sure if I was still going to be into the story, but I shouldn't have worried, this ended up being just as good as the first book. That being said, it was a bit different.

In this book we are introduced to some new characters. I ended up liking all of them, especially Naelin. As another reviewer said, it was refreshing to have an older protagonist in this story, in this case a mother of two children. I liked her story arc and what ultimately ends up happening with her character. It was easy to predict how things would end up in the end with the queens, and who was behind the bad things that were happening, but that didn't ruin the book for me. With the way this book left things, I'm eager to read the last book in the trilogy.

On a side note- There seems to be a bit of confusion as to whether this is YA or not. It certainly reads like a YA book, and most people seem to be categorizing it as YA, but the author lists this under her adult category on her webpage, so I'm calling it adult.