A review by jae_28
The Never King by Nikki St. Crowe

challenging dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

I love a good retelling so I overlooked the ‘dark’ in the summary and decided to give it a go cause I was genuinely interested. And the main plot is so intriguing, it’s the only thing that got me through this. Thirty percent in and I knew this would not have been something I could physically sit down and read so I’m glad I listened to the audiobook. But what bothered me with that: there were multiple POVs (which the book didn’t need btw because we still barely got anything from them beyond thirsting after the MC) and all the narrators weren’t great. I think the thing with books like these is that smut takes precedence over plot and the story falls flat until the author decides to dump everything in at the end. That’s what happened here and I was interested enough in the grain of plot we got that I even started the next book. Only, like this one, it started focusing more on smut and I couldn’t sit through that again, so I stopped. This might work for people who’re into dark romance (?) and reverse harems with the main plot on the back burner. And the main character is 18... considering what they have to do to get information out of the Darlings wouldn't it make more sense for them to wait until their brains are fully developed?