What do you think?
Rate this book
496 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2018
“The thought of what had been—of what could yet be—persisted. Perhaps it is not the same for most people. Perhaps, when you love less, it is easier not to let the emptiness become a cavern from which you could no longer see the sun.”
This was a marital soap opera set in a fantasy world. The story was driven by the MC’s motives to find her husband and then relationship drama followed with a love triangle/square in a repetitive plot and underdeveloped world-building. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with that, except that I did not sign up for such a story but a book full of adventure/suspense and pollical intrigue (to not say epic because no, I didn’t expect it to be so). Hence, I was bored throughout this book and what little interest I had vanished around the 50% mark.
To begin with, the whole start wasn’t convincing. Our main character is the queen and her husband left her (and their son) 5 years ago and she never heard him again until chapter 1 where he sends a letter asking her to meet him. Against the advice of everyone, she goes to a foreign country to meet this husband of hers, taking 20 guards only. Without even informing anyone back home. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan and the whole thing becomes a repetitive mess.
I honestly had so many issues with this book that I don’t know where to start from. Thus, I’m going to talk about the main character first: Talyien.
So, our MC is a queen, labeled the shelf wolf. The bitch queen. And that cover! Oh, how badass she looks like holding the sword. The truth is she’s weak. Not as cold as she tries to sound or be. Not as strong as the cover implies. Certainly, not a powerful queen. Why? Well
1- Any strong-willed, independent, and “bitch” queen would’ve stopped loving her jerk of a husband long ago. You see, she loved him even though he cheated on her, never treated her with any affection, left without a word, never asked about her nor their child, basically never did anything to deserve her love. This has folly of hers led her to leave her country to get him back home. Yeah, as if he’s not a ruler either and needs an invitation. I didn’t buy his motives nor reasoning.
2- This leads me to my second point: how she can make idiotic, selfish, and ignorant decisions to save a failed marriage, risking her whole kingdom meanwhile.
3- No one respects her/talks to her with respect. They instead criticize (and not the fruitful kind) and speak to her impolitely as if she’s not their queen. But hey, if she was back home? She would’ve severed their heads but alas, she’s not (we heard this line so many times, I had to roll my eyes each time said so).
4- She rejects good people’s help but trusts treacherous people. Excuse me?
5- She’s certainly not the badass queen the book is trying to make her look like.
The secondary characters? Well, the husband is a bastard and we’ve already established that. The rest lack personality and development. Except for Khine none were interesting or had a depth to their character. Most of the rest were a confusion of names to me. The character dynamics felt stiff a few times and not very natural.
Now fine, even if the characters sucked, there’s no reason to give it 1 star. Except that the plot itself was badly written to say the least. It took a long time for the action to start. We also had:
- Lots of repetitiveness, she’s lost/kidnapped/whatever then someone intervenes and helps/ saves her. So there wasn’t much going on. It picked up a bit towards the end but by then I’ve had lost all interest.
- Plot conveniences. On one hand, the author liked to make it look as hopeless as possible for Talyien and I honestly had a feeling that she humiliated her a lot! But then a convenience to a very difficult situation comes up and ta-da, our problem is solved!
- Plot holes because like I said before, some things did not make sense to me. At one point we have her escape in a very absurd way that simply cannot happen Also, there are plotlines other than being held under duress!!
The writing didn’t do it for me especially since we surprisingly didn’t know a lot about the world. The author has been writing in this world for over a decade and yet this book felt a lot like a debut. For example, we had flashbacks but they were random and too long. They felt separate from the plot. In other instances, we had what we see in some romance books like “sudden/random kiss” which can be… interesting. Not here though. One simply doesn’t do that in an adult fantasy novel in this way, certainly not to a queen and definitely not more than once. In fact, if this was a young-adult, it would’ve been a lot better because I would’ve excused stupid and impulsive decisions. But this wasn’t.
I wish we had more fantasy elements in this book. Dragons were vaguely mentioned but not fully explored. I can only assume that they’ll play a bigger role in future books. I also expect Talyien to develop more in the next book but sadly, I have no interest in reading the sequel nor actually care about what will happen next. This book had potential with its Asian setting, the politics between the countries, and the mythical creatures, however sadly, these weren’t explored and Villoso chose to focus instead on the dull relationship between husband and wife.
Overall, the plot was weak and the characters were underwhelming. Saying “bitch” in the title in my opinion is not creative at all and not a nice way to describe the main character at least in the title. I probably wouldn’t have read this book if it wasn’t the BOTM but I am now seeing it a lot around Instagram so in a way, I’m still glad I did (I do like to read popular books). What I can say is that for the most part, if you liked the female lead and or the secondary characters, you’ll enjoy this book. Opinions were pretty split and while everyone agrees on certain aspects (the whole unconvincing arc of the husband for example), some of my friends enjoyed it regardless so check the reviews of Milica and Hamad for a more positive feedback and Serge and Lydia’s for a similar reading experience (and opinion) to mine.
I wish Villoso the best in her writing career but this will probably be my first and last book by her. Only if a new one got very popular and the reviews were positive, I might read it. Otherwise, her books are not for me.
“Remind me,” I murmured, “why a single moment is enough to outweigh the rest. Why fickle tempers rule over steadfast hearts.”
“They called me “bitch”, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.”
“Five years of regret has a funny way of fermenting inside someone—like wine, it had only gained potency over the years.”
buddy read with gargee;they wouldn't have let me live otherwise.
They called me 'bitch', the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.
I tried to titter, but I had never been very good at that and ended up coughing instead).