A review by lavendermarch
The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni

2.0

I've had this on my want-to-read list for a while and was excited to finally read it. Sadly, I found it underwhelming. It was consistently super dark and frankly, depressing, which I didn't love. I also wasn't a fan of the twist at the end after all of that hopelessness - just when things finally seemed hopeful,

Spoiler

Kiva became a princess at odds with Jaren. And despite the backstory of the original royals, I'm frankly not sure what that has to do with Kiva's family centuries later. What's the point? Yes, the prison was AWFUL (that's not a strong enough word for it), but I don't get what the point was of "taking back their kingdom" when it's been centuries?? In my opinion, there wasn't anywhere near enough time spent talking about why the current rulers weren't doing a good enough job. And the betrayal wasn't close enough to the present day to make the rebellion justified imo. It just wasn't convincing at all.

While I really liked Jaren, Naari, and Tipp, I wasn't as into Kiva. In addition, the storyline was disappointing and I didn't really enjoy it, especially the ending. 2 stars.