Goodreads Synopsis:
Alessandra is tired of being overlooked, but she has a plan to gain power:
1) Woo the Shadow King.
2) Marry him.
3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.
No one knows the extent of the freshly crowned Shadow King’s power. Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she’s going to do everything within her power to get it.
But Alessandra’s not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen—all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?
My Review:
For the first time, I recorded some of my thoughts as I read The Shadows Between Us. I’m not including the recordings, but the basic ideas are here.
The positives: I am not a romance novel person but I could tell this one would be great, and it was! Alessandra was cunning, brutal, and unapologetic, which is something I love to but don’t often see. I despise love triangles and I didn’t even know there was one in this book, but I actually engaged with this one. For a while I could not choose between Kallias and Leandros and it really got me excited to see how Alessandra would.
A lot of times, I see that young adult romances really aren’t evenly matched. Personalities clash or things seemed forced, but certainly not in The Shadows Between Us. Levenseller really created a relatively healthy relationship and both of the love interests seemed to be good for Alessandra.
Now for the negatives. I really did love reading this, but there were a couple of things I couldn’t bring myself to look away from. First of all (MILD SPOILER BUT NOT BAD), when Alessandra asks how Kallias got his power, he says that his ancestor prayed to the gods in a moment of weakness and when that didn’t work he prayed to the devils, and the devil of pain gave him the power. This is all well and good, but I don’t remember any other mention of the gods and as far as I know, no one in their entire world has any magical powers besides Kallias, whether they be the same or vastly different.
Secondly, the Hektor plot line. On the very first page, Alessandra says that she killed Hektor, the first boy to break her heart. As the book progresses, people are starting to look into Hektor’s disappearance/death. This definitely added a time-sensitive element which was nicely done, and I appreciated that the hook from page one was still relevant hundreds of pages later. However, the Hektor plot line really had a dissatisfying ending. I was expecting something much different, and while the actual ending to that issue seemed relatively natural, I felt like it could’ve been done better because all that the reaction proved was something proved a thousand times already.
Besides the issues mentioned, I loved and enjoyed this book so much! I would recommend this to people who like unapologetic Slytherin characters (given that I’m a Slytherin myself, I really do), doomed romances, and a dark aspect to romance in fantasy. This reminded me of Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin a little bit, which is another romance novel I love with some of the same tropes. I would definitely consider The Shadows Between Us to be worth the read!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.
The Fiction Feature 