Scan barcode
A review by adominiquereads
The Goodnight Kiss by Jennifer L. Hart
4.0
I received an ARC ebook copy of this book from the author in exchange for a honest review
This is also a non-spoilery review, so that you guys can go ahead and read everything.
“ ‘Dare airson aisling,’ Aiden says softly. Dare for a dream.”
The first thing that captured my interest in this book was that Jennifer L. Hart told me that I was going to love this one because it was a similar tone to ACOTAR. If you guys know me fully well, that alone would have made me read the book without even reading its blurb or asking what it would be about. But like the good reader that I am, I had to check out the synopsis of the book.
The Goodnight Kiss is the first book in The Unseelie Court series. The series title alone was more than enough for me to know that we would be dealing with the Fae and its 2 infamous courts. Our main character, Nic Rutherford is almost like your regular 16 year old teenager, living with her aunts who run a veterinary clinic and a best friend who likes to party. But she has a secret power - her kiss is deadly. Yes! Like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White's Prince Charmings but with a totally reverse effect. Nic hunts down sexual predators and essentially bad people, luring them into her trap until she gives them her deadly kiss which she calls the Goodnight Kiss. So she's basically like a vigilante-slash-grim reaper to the bad people in her area. She's pretty independent and badass, so I loved Nic already at the beginning.
I loved how this book was a mix of urban fantasy and mythology at the same time. For the fantasy lover in me, I adored how we finally get to explore here the inner happenings in the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Most books I have read that tackle on the Fae don't usually delve much into this aspect of the stories (apart from Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter Chronicles) It is such a huge world that can give a lot of possibilities to a story to make it even better. So kudos to the author for giving us a new twist to the Fae courts and the world beyond it. Also, if you're a huge mythology fan, this book is worth check out. I didn't expect the Norse mythology to be mixed into it. That was actually why I couldn't give it the full 5 stars rating, because I don't know much about Norse mythology (aside from what I only know from Thor and Loki in the Marvel Universe). But I'm a bit glad that it came with a few stories here and there, so I wasn't completely confused most of the time.
If you're looking for romance in this book, you wouldn't be disappointed. The relationship between Nic and Aiden is very thrilling yet complicated. I'm actually surprised that this book is YA, and not New Adult because of the romantic scenes, aside from the violence, social issues, and trigger points that surrounded the whole book. This is not an insta-love story, which I love, especially at how young Nic was in the book, and I just hated the whole idea of teenagers quickly falling in love.
Also, the diversity in this book is epic! This is my first time to encounter an asexual character in a book, and I enjoyed viewing it from Nic's perspective a lot. While I'm very much open to all sexual identities in books, this pretty much took me by surprise - in a good way. We get to watch Nic try to solve the mysteries of her attraction to Aiden because she never felt anything like sexual attraction before. And Nic isn't the only LGBTQ character in the book.
Judging from what I've read so far, I did enjoy the book a lot, though there were only a few hints of ACOTAR in it. But even without it, I would have enjoyed reading it. I can't wait to read the next book, especially with that small cliffhanger at the end.
This is also a non-spoilery review, so that you guys can go ahead and read everything.
“ ‘Dare airson aisling,’ Aiden says softly. Dare for a dream.”
The first thing that captured my interest in this book was that Jennifer L. Hart told me that I was going to love this one because it was a similar tone to ACOTAR. If you guys know me fully well, that alone would have made me read the book without even reading its blurb or asking what it would be about. But like the good reader that I am, I had to check out the synopsis of the book.
The Goodnight Kiss is the first book in The Unseelie Court series. The series title alone was more than enough for me to know that we would be dealing with the Fae and its 2 infamous courts. Our main character, Nic Rutherford is almost like your regular 16 year old teenager, living with her aunts who run a veterinary clinic and a best friend who likes to party. But she has a secret power - her kiss is deadly. Yes! Like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White's Prince Charmings but with a totally reverse effect. Nic hunts down sexual predators and essentially bad people, luring them into her trap until she gives them her deadly kiss which she calls the Goodnight Kiss. So she's basically like a vigilante-slash-grim reaper to the bad people in her area. She's pretty independent and badass, so I loved Nic already at the beginning.
I loved how this book was a mix of urban fantasy and mythology at the same time. For the fantasy lover in me, I adored how we finally get to explore here the inner happenings in the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Most books I have read that tackle on the Fae don't usually delve much into this aspect of the stories (apart from Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter Chronicles) It is such a huge world that can give a lot of possibilities to a story to make it even better. So kudos to the author for giving us a new twist to the Fae courts and the world beyond it. Also, if you're a huge mythology fan, this book is worth check out. I didn't expect the Norse mythology to be mixed into it. That was actually why I couldn't give it the full 5 stars rating, because I don't know much about Norse mythology (aside from what I only know from Thor and Loki in the Marvel Universe). But I'm a bit glad that it came with a few stories here and there, so I wasn't completely confused most of the time.
If you're looking for romance in this book, you wouldn't be disappointed. The relationship between Nic and Aiden is very thrilling yet complicated. I'm actually surprised that this book is YA, and not New Adult because of the romantic scenes, aside from the violence, social issues, and trigger points that surrounded the whole book. This is not an insta-love story, which I love, especially at how young Nic was in the book, and I just hated the whole idea of teenagers quickly falling in love.
Also, the diversity in this book is epic! This is my first time to encounter an asexual character in a book, and I enjoyed viewing it from Nic's perspective a lot. While I'm very much open to all sexual identities in books, this pretty much took me by surprise - in a good way. We get to watch Nic try to solve the mysteries of her attraction to Aiden because she never felt anything like sexual attraction before. And Nic isn't the only LGBTQ character in the book.
Judging from what I've read so far, I did enjoy the book a lot, though there were only a few hints of ACOTAR in it. But even without it, I would have enjoyed reading it. I can't wait to read the next book, especially with that small cliffhanger at the end.