In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.
On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.
The Kiss of Deception is the first book in Mary E. Pearson’s Remnant Chronicles.
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Sexual Content - 2/5
2/5
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Violence - 2/5
2/5
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Language - 1/5
1/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - /5
/5
Summary
Plenty of deception- and kissing- abound in Jenna Fox Chronicles author Mary E. Pearson's aptly named Kiss of Deception. While I felt like this book was definitely written with the \"YA high fantasy formula\"- a princess forced into arranged marriage with a prince who turns out to be hot, some bad guys who crawl out of the desert to kidnap Helpless Beautiful Princess, she fights them with her Supermagical Special Powers- there were some cool parts that made for fun reading. The \"deception\" part of the story was what made this a memorable read. The reader is immediately aware that the princess's two lovers are actually a vengeful assassin and the prince she left at the altar. However, the reader then has to do a little work. It's not clear which boy is the assassin- and which one is the prince. Even though we hear from both their persons directly, it's very difficult to guess until it's revealed who's who. Needless to say, I guessed totally wrong and had to go back and reread half the book. Wrong guesses aside, it was a fun and fresh addition to the usual high-fantasy trope. I didn't connect very well with the main character, and some of the prose was a little ridiculously overdone, so it's only a 3-star book for me. High fantasy is hard to write, though, and my expectations for this book were super high (thank you, social media, for once again getting me waaaay too excited for the first book in new series) so I'll give the author some slack. This was a pretty good read to take slowly over a few days or weeks (length-wise, it's pretty large). I would recommend it to high fantasy fans looking for a fun mystery also. Special note to fans of The Girl Of Fire And Thorns (my review for that is also on this website)- this book was extremely reminiscent of that series, although the heroine of Deception is obviously several pounds lighter at the beginning of the story.
Violence-I'm always kind of on the fence about violence because I hardly even notice it in books anymore. I don't feel like this book was especially violent, but there was a battle where a bunch of people got maimed and someone is shot in the throat.
Language-Hardly any
Sexual-The romance was mostly offstage and not very hot at all