Genre: Dark Fantasy/Romance/Reimagining/Retelling
Plot: “What a pretty flower to keep locked in a big, rocky tower.”
Nineteen years ago, I was plucked from the heart of a bloody massacre that spared nobody else.
Small. Fragile.
An enigma.
Now ward to a powerful High Master who knows too much and says too little, I lead a simple life, never straying from the confines of an imaginary line I’ve drawn around the castle grounds.
Stay within. Never leave.
Out there, the monsters lurk. Inside, I’m safe … though at a cost far greater than the blood I drip into a goblet daily.
Toxic, unreciprocated love for a man who’s utterly unavailable.
My savior. My protector.
My almost executioner.
I can’t help but be enamored with the arcane man who holds the power to pull my roots from the ground.
When voracious beasts spill across the land and threaten to fray the fabric of my tailored existence, the petals of reality will peel back to reveal an ugly truth. But in a castle puddled with secrets, none are greater than the one I’ve kept from myself.
No tower is tall enough to protect me from the horror that tore my life to shreds.
Opinion:
“Feed my hungry heart.”
All Orlaith has ever known is Castle Noir and the mysterious man that prowls its stone walls. She knows every inch of its grounds, at least those within her self-made safety line, and every bloom of flowers, sprouting of mushrooms and speck of foliage that litters its lands. She spends her days creating tonics and ointments from ingredients she forages, training with her instructor and chaperone Baze, and visiting her Ocean Drake friend Kai. But Orlaith refuses to cross her boundary she’s drawn around the castle, or to interact with the people that come and go. She is frightened of what lies beyond, because even in her sleep she can’t escape the creatures that shred apart her memories and feed on her fears. She just wants to be free of the terrors that consume her, and to be seen by the man who took her in as his ward. The man that is High Master to their territory and a mass of brutality and darkness.
“Of course I’m sheltered, but I built the walls of my own prison.”
This book hurt my heart.
Slowly cut my chest with a dull blade, and yanked my barely thumping organ out millimeter by agonizing millimeter.
This s**t hurt.
I have never encountered an author who encapsulates grief, sorrow and regret so beautifully in words. Sarah A. Parker has forged characters out of gravely dirt and compost, thrust cracked seeds into its barren soil, and bloomed people that make my throat ache with each choked and scraggly inhale. These people are horrendously flawed, broken and barely hanging onto their own sanity. They are woe incarnate, and I’ve become addicted to every one of them.
“I hang my head and pretend the stars aren’t staring holes through my back.”
Orlaith is like a precious budding rose you hope survives a monsoon. She is so young. So sheltered and naive. She is 21 but she has a raw innocence that makes her still feel like a teenager, only one that doesn’t make your eyes roll to the back of your head. She’s moody, sassy, energetic, playful and endearing. She has such strong bonds with the few people she has let close to her, and those people would tear the world down to protect her. She is pure sunshine…or so we think.
Orlaith has horrible nightmares that plague every ounce of sleep she acquires. And to combat it, the girl drowns herself in brews that knock her into oblivion at night and then doses herself in the morning with another concoction until she’s flying higher than the sun.
“Her wide eyes are aglitter with thousands of facets, as if she’s staring out from a sky full of stars that hatched in her soul.”
But for years all Orlaith has really wanted is the attention and affection of the man whose home she resides in. The man who is barely ever around, and when he is, gives her nothing more than detached and cold orders. A man who Orlaith has grown to love and yearn for with every fiber of her being.
“Right now, I’d give anything he asked. I’d give him my soul. The breath in my lungs. I’d lump my heart on a silver platter and let him drink straight from the source.”
And let me tell you, this is the slow-burn of all slow-burn romances. Never have I EVER had to go back to check that I was actually reading a romance. Never had I questioned if I had the right love interest so desperately in my life.
Because this man is cruel to this girl.
And I don’t mean cruel in a way that says he abuses her or belittles her. He doesn’t lock her in that big tower and he doesn’t tell her she can’t go places or move freely. I mean cruel in how he can clearly see and feel how much she desires him, and he dismisses her like she isn’t anything more than a wet leaf attached to his boot.
She begs for his praise and his comfort, and he yields nothing.
“Because I’m tired. So, so tired, and I’m not okay with this—with that female standing amongst my roses, luring smiles from a man usually as apathetic as a gravestone.”
Every time Orlaith gets even an inch closer to him, he allows her into the space and then throws her out the f**cking window.
It’s gutting.
“And then he’s gone, leaving me alone at the wall, crushed against it by his parting words. A terse reminder that I may be his, but he’ll never be mine.”
But Rhordyn and his flippant heart aside, Orlaith is who you will focus every part of your being on. She is fighting so hard to find out who she is and where she fits, and her chaotic grief and slightly suicidal tendencies tickle those dark places in every one of our hearts. She is the inner child in every one of us that we so desperately want to protect, but god is this girl in an ugly land of self-hatred and loathing for herself.
And the worst part is how little we know about her past and the horrors that plague her. Because this book is filled with SECRETS upon SECRETS. Bottomless holes and cavernous twists and turns of webs that are only going to get worse as the series goes on (trust me, because I already devoured all three books). Every time you’re given an inch, Sarah A. Parker will yank you a mile back.
“The hollow statement guts me, and when paired with those tombstone eyes … I’m six feet under, pushing daisies from my rotting corpse.”
Now I did say there were other characters that captured my heart, and there are.
Baze
Dear, dear Baze. What a sweet, broken baby angel he is. Now in this book we really only see his saucy side that comes off as flippant, unbothered, easily amused and aloof. He has been a sort of protector and shadow to Orlaith since she arrived at Castle Noir as a child, and their bond has become very strong. They are incredibly close and they fight with each other like siblings, but we know they would do anything for one another. But Baze does answer to Rhordyn, as he is the High Master, which means that the same secrets Rhordyn hides from Orlaith, Baze must hide as well.
Kai
What a dream Kai is, oh my god! He is an Ocean Drake who calls Orlaith Treasure (swoon) and who Orlaith is able to be completely free around. I wish we would have had more POVs from Kai, and gotten more about his past and his life. He is such a sweet and alluring character, I wanted more of him! I felt that things were left undone at the end of this first installment in terms of him and Orlaith, and it never really gets tied back up.
Cain
So Cain pops into this tale much later in the book, but my oh my is he stealing the show. He is alluring, mysterious, unapologetic and I kind of like it. There is much more of him to come, and GIRL does it get wild, but I will say that I really liked Cain in this book and in book two. You can’t help but be a magnet to him, and that’s what makes this story and these romances even more confusing!
Rhodryn
Can I even get through this part without being annoyed? Ugh! This man infuriates me! And breaks my heart because of how dragged Orlaith is by him. But to say he’s not everything we dark girlies swoon for would be a lie, lie, lie. He is death, darkness, brutality, and anger incarnate. I love him. Even though I don’t understand him at all. And probably never will.
I will never beg you guys to read a book as much as I am begging now.
PLEASE READ THIS.
It is beautiful, sorrowful, ugly and wretched in the best ways possible. There were times where I was definitely confused and definitely having to reread paragraphs, but it’s impossible not to with Sarah’s whimsical and ethereal writing. Not only is it beyond breathtaking, but she’s also made sure to leave her readers utterly confused and in the dark. Which is where I think she likes us all to be. The girl is a monster, and I even told her as much.
But if this book will teach you anything…
…it’ll teach you to love the monsters.
jenacidebybibliophile 