A review by rosreads
The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson

5.0

Mary E. Pearson undoubtly blows my mind again. She’s so well skilled in twisting stories and make this book unputdownable.

The story begins with the exact same time where it left hanging in the end of the first book. Kaden and Vendan soldiers agreed to take Lia and Rafe as prisoner when Venda was well known to never take prisoner. The enemies always dead. Beside it, they also believe that Rafe was an emissary of the Crown Prince of Dalbreck, where you all know better who he really was. They all walked in through the border, and Lia really felt that she was in the middle of barbarian land since the first thing she saw were people with black teeth and belt with bones dangling alongside it.

The Komizar finally made an appearence here. He was a cold and calm man on the outside, but Lia knew that beneath his calm gaze, he was calculating her every movements to see what had made Kaden spare her from his task to slit her throath. I’m instantly afraid of this brat, even through words I can easily picture his greediness of power that he refused to share even a bit. We also get to know his relationship and history with Kaden, why Kaden was so loyal to a monster like him.

For you who have read book one, you must be aware of some triangle love that happen here. But I assure you, there’s no more triangle love than political problems in this book. We all know that Kaden had quite a feeling for Lia, but it doesn’t make this book full of love stories and constant battle between Kaden and Rafe, though you still can feel the tension between them.
As for Lia, she had a really great character development here. She was stubborn and fierce in the first book, and here we also see that she was smart, bold, and really really unafaraid. She began to unravel secrets beneath The Sanctum where she’s kept as prisoner, and her gift also developed to a whole new step. She began to understand the history of Venda that actually doesn’t really far from the history of Morrighan itself, yet so full of lies.
In this book Mary presents us with truths after truths that you really don’t expect. The Komizar held a significant rule in this book since Lia and Rafe were in his ‘mercy’. Lia also discovered that Venda was not what she really imagine at all. There were so much more that the outside world didn’t understand about it. We also have Pauline’s point of view here so we still have an eye of what happened in Morrighan while Lia was in Venda.

I enjoy this book as much as I enjoy the frst one, if not more. Deception and betrayal aren’t really different, so you should really prepare to be hooked, so much betrayals that would be revealed, and the ending, ah yes you’d want to tear your hair because Mary leaves us hanging again. This ending makes me expect a whole new stories in book three that I’m sure will not be less intriguing. You should pick this up as soon as possible.