The Heart of Betrayal
The Remnant Chronicles, book 2
by Mary E. Pearson
Now a captive of Venda, Lia lives among the supposed barbarians while the prince and assassin try to keep her alive.
Usually it’s the second book in a trilogy that falls a bit flat, but this one outshined The Kiss of Deception in my opinion. The first book is truly a tale of deception. It had a solid beginning and a great ending, but everything in between was a love-triangle based game of Spot the Assassin that dragged on too long for my taste. The Heart of Betrayal on the other hand took those compelling last ten pages and ran with them.
This is still a tale of deception. No one is quite what their role would have you believe and there is still a lot of misdirection. The prince gives up his freedom, the assassin is working to keep his target alive, the barbarians aren’t particularly monstrous. Now that we’ve gotten a larger cast influencing things and the stakes have been raised, I thought this was a much more layered and engaging book than the first one.
If you also finished the first book and thought the last ten pages were easily the best part, it might be worth giving this sequel a shot.
<3D
LessthanThreeD 