Run-away Princess, Kingdoms at a brink of an upcoming war, A Prince and An Assassin at her trail.
In short, the synopsis is slightly cliché with a hint of love-triangle. Not something I would read, however, I’m a sucker for Fantasy stories involving badass princess on the run.
While picking up the book, I thought that is resembled quite a bit with Carson’s The Girl of Fire and Thorns. (we all know how that went – my review for that can be read here). Fortunately, The Kiss of Deception has been everything I had hoped from the former book and I flew through its pages.
The book directly dives into POVs of our main three characters; The princess with a ‘gift’, The Prince, and The Assassin. Throughout the story, we get interludes of the Assassin’s and the Prince’s POV and their inner dilemma while the book continues on the development of the plot and the characters.
Kaden and Rafe, both, soon develop an interest in Princess Lia, however readers are kept in dark as to who is the assassin and who is the prince until past half of the book. The remaining half is where the story picks up and the bigger plot is revealed with an unraveling of a prophecy.
Mary Pearson excels at world building and still maintaining interest in the finer details of the differences in kingdoms, the languages spoken, and their cultures. The story was paced adequately, without being dragged and you start to care for all characters soon enough.
Overall I gave this a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Looking forward to reading the sequels.
