Review: Four Dead Queens

Ｔｉｔｌｅ：Four Dead Queens

Ａｕｔｈｏｒ：Astrid Scholte

Ｓｅｒｉｅｓ：Standalone

Ｒａｔｉｎｇ：★ ★ ★ ★ ★

＊Ｎｏｔｅ：I received an ARC of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Seventeen-year-old Keralie Corrington may seem harmless, but in fact, she’s one of Quadara’s most skilled thieves and a liar. Varin, on the other hand, is an honest, upstanding citizen of Quadara’s most enlightened region, Eonia. Varin runs afoul of Keralie when she steals a package from him, putting his life in danger. When Varin attempts to retrieve the package, he and Keralie find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that leaves all four of Quadara’s queens dead.

With no other choices and on the run from Keralie’s former employer, the two decide to join forces, endeavoring to discover who has killed the queens and save their own lives in the process. When their reluctant partnership blooms into a tenuous romance, they must overcome their own dark secrets in hopes of a future together that seemed impossible just days before. But first they have to stay alive and untangle the secrets behind the nation’s four dead queens.

✩ Keralie was very selfish and immature. She didn’t take things seriously and really only looked out for herself.

❝ “Sometimes failure is the beginning of success” ❞

This was a book I had been very excited about. I loved the concept of four sister queens, the intrigue of a good mystery, and a potential thief now having to turn “good” to help her kingdom. But in the end, none of these things happened. I was so let down by this book, so utterly bored, that I had to DNF it at 45%.

My first clue that I was in for a rough ride was when the author started assaulting me with all these rules and history lessons about how the queens came to be (granted, the main character seemed annoying but this was the first thing that truly bothered me). I really hate it when authors info dump. Sometimes I just felt like I should be straight up taking notes.

The characters were the next issue I ran into because as we were introduced to the queens I could not for the life of me tell them apart. There was nothing really distinguishable about them. They were all pretty bland and honestly, I couldn’t care less about them. I never formed any sort of connection to them or Keralie (unless you want to count irritation).

I was hoping that at least Keralie would be interesting but that was a dead-end too. She didn’t seem to care for anyone but herself; she was very selfish. She also didn’t take anything seriously. Her character was just a joke. She threw away her family and a good life just because she “wanted” to be a thief. How lazy is that?

And just because I can’t end this review without touching on this: the laws for the kingdom we’re stupid as hell. I don’t see how it is helpful to forbid relationships and not let queens visit the territories they are in charge of. Ugh, no logic there. The rules just felt like they were made up to create false/unnecessary drama.

As for the plot, it moved agonizingly slow and that was really the last nail in the coffin for me. Only my natural curiosity drove me to read this far as I did. I had kind of already guess who was behind things and just skimmed some later chapters and online reviews to confirm my theory. Overall, for dead queens was just poorly written and a complete waste of time for me.

What did you think of Four Dead Queens?