A review by furaleii
A Game of Hearts and Heists by Ruby Roe

4.5

I really like the magic system in this book-- I'm not entirely sure of how it works yet, but it seems as though there are houses of magic, and each house has a respective tattoo; those tattoos give each individual wearing it the powers of that house, and the more tattoos you have the more powerful you are. The houses are alive, reminding me of the Madrigal house from Encanto. I like that it's an adventure fantasy, as well-- I wasn't expecting that.

Scarlett is an Assassin and Quinn is a potion maker, specializing in poisons. It’s an enemies to lovers, though their dynamic throughout the book is strange to me. At the beginning, they absolutely despise each other; and then all out of (seemingly) nowhere, they're suddenly much more romantic and sweet to each other. At first, it's made out to be planned, but it was never a specific switch; the relationship felt like the writer was just rushing to get to the romance-- which, me too, so I didn't exactly hate it, but it felt a bit rushed.

Things that make me enjoy a book are often the small details that the authors input into their characters to give them more personality. This book had an AMAZING example of this, and it made the character and plot so much more enjoyable because of it. Scarlett, our Assassin, carries around a gold coin that she has named Chance, and Chance is often in charge of making her biggest yes or no decisions. She would flip Chance any time she didn't know what to do, and went with the outcome without question or hesitation. This made the story and character development so much more enjoyable, because she was never predictable and you couldn't truly tell what she was going to do in those moments until she used Chance. This made her so much more interesting as a character, in my opinion, even though sometimes it made me want to slam my head into the wall.