This book was the January 2019's Sapphic Book Club read hosted by sapphicbookclub.It's really hard to write this review, because I was really looking forward to this read. The summary is really intriguing, the idea is cool and I love the cover. I also liked the writing style and some of the characters. And I’m always here for a nice happy end.There’s stuff that I think can be easily overlooked because of the genre, like how insane the backstories sound when you compare the ages of everyone with This book was the January 2019's Sapphic Book Club read hosted by sapphicbookclub.It's really hard to write this review, because I was really looking forward to this read. The summary is really intriguing, the idea is cool and I love the cover. I also liked the writing style and some of the characters. And I’m always here for a nice happy end.There’s stuff that I think can be easily overlooked because of the genre, like how insane the backstories sound when you compare the ages of everyone with the time clues, or being madly in love after knowing each other for like a week. But the farther I got into the book, the more problems I ended up having with how the story is composed. There were a lot of moments that confused or bothered me, but I wanted to wait with any judgment to see if it will all make sense in the end. I assumed a lot of things were just made to look like they are to trick me, to be revealed as tricks with some kind of plot twist later on. But that didn’t happen.The important thing about this book, the ‘two sides to every story’ and the ‘poison within’ promised in the summary and the title, is deeply connected with how the characterization of Queen Rya is done. And that part sadly fell flat for me. Everything about Rya confused me from beginning to end because her portrayal felt incoherent. (view spoiler)[We see that first ‘black queen’ flashback in the prologue. But then when we meet her as Rya, she’s just shown as a typical neutral-nice character. So for the longest time I suspected there were two entirely different black queens. But no, it’s all Rya. And then the first ‘flashback explanation’ made it look like her bad reputation might really just have been a mistake, that she’s 'not really like that' and had all that stuff kind of thrust upon her and she had to go along with it to keep the power.But then in the next flashbacks we see her unnecessarily cruel actions, so she has to have a part in her that is dark like that. With unnecessarily cruel I mean:Did that child slaver deserve to die? Yes. But did Rya have to create such a horror show and burn her alive – literally with her own hands? And then she wants to stroll in to gather the boy who wanted to marry her when they were both 13, after being away for a long time, and he is mean and nasty to her. That sucks. But did she have to take him, lock him away for a year and destroy not only his own life but also his family’s?If that's the kind of character she is supposed to be, one with ‘poison within’, that is totally fine. But I didn't feel like that was the character she was in the first 2/3 of the book.And Cam’s reaction to the story about the boy she held captive with 16 is basically 'well that wasn't cool but not entirely wrong I guess? Also don’t worry, I’d never treat you like that'. I can't deny that I personally would fall for a dark queen too and don’t care about murderous tendencies half the time, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a good story. (hide spoiler)]
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