As an avid book reader, finding a book with tropes that you love without reading basically the same book over and over again can be challenging. That is why I quickly fell in love with “A Rise of the Immortal Queen” by Paula Ellison Franklin.
She has created one of the more intriguing plot lines, regarding vampires blending into the human realm and falling into a forbidden love, that I have read in a while.
The story follows Temperance, a royal-born Geto-Dacian (aka vampire) who finds herself torn between two paths. Being queen or giving up everything she ever wanted to experience in the human realm.
When Geto-Dacians “come of age” they are required to attend the academy to learn how to be around humans without feeding on them. Once they can prove themselves, they then have to use magic, “glamor,” to make themselves look younger and more human.
This is so they can attend grade school with humans and learn to live amongst them without being detected by the Venatores, vampire hunters who lie doormat until provoked by the Geto-Dacian.
However, Temperance discovers during her first human cycle that she is the new Reqwm, the vampire Queen, and her world fractures. Torn between experiencing the normalcy of human school, parties, a crush, and friendships and the crushing responsibility of ruling her people, she is forced into a dangerous balancing act.
It gave me a Vampire Kisses vibe with a hunter twist to it. The concept had me requesting this ARC instantly.
However, my overall thoughts about this book are a little mixed. The glamouring a 300-year-old vampire to look like a 12-year-old, just so they can play with other 12-year-old humans took me a little bit to wrap my brain around that. I know vampires are often known for glamouring and changing their appearances to blend in, this is the first time I have read anything like this.
Don’t get me wrong I did love it, and I do want to read the next book as soon as I can, but there are some other aspects that I struggled with.
The first being how the point of view was written. I love how we were able to get a point of view from most of the characters, but the writing during the beginning of the book was hard to keep up with, during some of the transitions.
It almost felt like the main character could read minds, feelings and intentions. Because as she is talking, we are also reading what the other person is feeling or thinking, and it made it a little confusing.
As the book went on it got easier to follow and became quite enjoyable. There aren’t too many scenarios where getting all sides of the story is enjoyable and it did add a level of depth to it that you don’t normally get.
My second issue was that the scenes never lasted long enough for me. It almost felt like the author was forcing the storyline to go a little faster just to get to the next major plot. In doing so it made some of the cute dates, or fun banter scenes, go quicker and lose some of the meaning for me.
Especially the scenes where we are finally getting to see another side to the characters and then the scene changes to something that didn’t really need to be that long or detailed.
However, my favorite part of the book outside of the storyline itself, was the banter between the two main characters. The strong female main character had just enough sass and spunk to make herself stand out from all of her friends and it was a nice change of pace to be inside the male main character’s head during his eternal struggles.
All in all, for a YA book this was a three-star read. This book kept me invested and curious enough to dive into the next one. I want to see how the main characters progress and where their story takes them. But I am most excited to see if I am right with what I believe is going on or if Paula gives me another twist in the plot.
★★★☆☆
🌶️ / 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
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