⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5 stars rounded-up Audiobook (Libby) Kindle Unlimited read I will be adding a phsycial copy of this to my trophy shelf. This was a light-hearted read, and something I've had my eye on for a while. It's not my usual genre of choice, and a friend of mine had said I wouldn't like i; I'd say I liked it plenty. I know nothing about politics, and least of all how presidential campaigns work, nor do I know how royalty lives work, so I won't bother trying to pretend I know how accurate it is in comparison, but I will say that I like that it felt accurate. I liked that, though the story was about a blossoming relationship between a First Son and Youngest Prince, their natural duties and lives weren't completely sidelined. Their friendship and eventual relationship felt natural in progression, and I think masquerading it as work-stuff really helped. The text messages and email exchanges were my favorite parts, and it makes me want to, for once, pick up a highlighter and annotate a physical book; I have not done that since I was back in high school doing 5 different book reports on the same book for 3 years (I'm not kidding) nor have I ever felt the desire to do so. 🤭 It makes me a little giddy at the thought, though I know I still won't mark up a book like that. The writing was easy to follow, although there were a lot of "he said" "she said" "they said", which I'm never a fan of, but it wasn't nearly as bad or noticeable as other books I've read. The bits of drama that were sprinkled in weren't drawn out until it was annoying, and it felt like everything was tackled in a decently timed manner without it being too quick, given the situation and context for what was happening. The ending itself felt a little long to me, though, with Alex's story being so wrapped up in election politics, it wouldn't have been very good to leave the results of that build up put of the book. I didn't care so much for the vote counts being detailed, and perhaps the author could have afforded glossing over things a bit more in that aspect. Over all, I enjoyed myself with this book. Is this my gateway into romcom books? 🤔

⭐⭐ 2 Stars Audiobook (Libby) If Rebecca kills off Ridoc, Aetrom, or Broccoli, I will riot. I had heard time and time again that the third book was carried hard by Ridoc, and I had some hopeful expectations hearing that. Was Ridoc utilized more as a capable warrior? Did Rebecca finally give the spotlight to some of our sides rather than have Violet and Xaden hog it all? Do we finally get to explore what everyone else is able to do? I was disappointed to find that the answer was "Not really". While there were a few instances where Ridoc showed himself as a capable fighter and warrior, he was mostly used as comic relief. Ridoc DID carry the third book, in my opinion, but it was not at all in the way I was hoping. Yes, I did enjoy finding out that Ridoc and his dragon, Aetrom, are engaged in a prank-war with one another, but that... should not be the reason I wanted to keep reading. I should not find Ridoc and Aetrom, the side characters in this series, to be FAR MORE interesting than Violet and Xaden. (Honestly, just give me a series of Ridoc and Aetrom, and their antics. They're hilarious.) Violet and Xaden were both incredibly infuriating, and there were parts of the book where I just wanted to delete the audio file and say "fuck it". Violet, in book 1 and 2, wanted to know the secrets and know about the resistance so badly that she was trying her hardest to pry into matters that weren't hers to pry into at the time. But, about 20% of the way into the book, she tells Xaden "You don't owe me your friends' secrets." Uhhhh.... if that were true, half of book 1 and a majority of book 2 would not have happened. At one point, there was also another mention of living by the Codex when that has been proven numerous times that that was not true. There were a lot of things mentioned in this book that didn't seem like it was true anymore, but somehow Rebecca keeps trying to feed it to us like it is true: 1. The Codex has been disregarded to hell and back. 2. "Dragon-kind protects its own, even above a bonded rider." Yeah, that's bullshit, or else Varrish wouldn't have existed as a villain, and dragon-kind would not have allowed their own humans to want to poke, prod and experiment on the hatchlings when they already expressed being extremely protective of them and their hatching grounds. I would also think the dragons would have a vested interest in destroying the venin in order to keep them from draining the hatching grounds completely dry, so there should have been no reason for a dragon to keep the fact that wyvern and venin existed hidden from riders. 3. How were people still loyal to the government and crown when it came to light that they'd been lying for years about a very serious threat like the venin and wyvern? Why were the dragons even tolerant of their lies when most if not all of them knew? Why did the dragons lie to their humans at all? 4. Tairn would talk all the time about how humans don't order them around, but they... sort of do. The dragons act all high and mighty, but they don't really do shit when the humans overstep. Tairn threatened all the time to eat people through the series, and sometimes the dragons would kill anther rider for getting too close to them, but for a strong and powerful species who don't listen to humans, they sure cooperate with them and answer to their orders a whole lot. Why don't the dragons fly away? Why don't they just straight up take over the world since the humans can't seem to get their shit together? There was another issue I took with this book, and it was pretty big for me. Xaden has shown that his shadows are capable of being used in a physical manner. He and Violet have also displayed being able to communicate in their heads, and even flash memories and visual thoughts to one another. Having brought that up, I'm incredibly disappointed with the smut. "Xaden can't touch Violet, or he'll drain her." And? Tie him up. Have his shadows do the touching. Sext via their connection to one another. Don't be a coward, Rebecca-- stop sticking to the vanilla and dig into the rest of that container of Neapolitan. Make the audience decide if they're going to kink-shame, or if they're into it. Rebecca, it was very low-hanging fruit, and you still missed it, and I'm incredibly disappointed. This book is all about dumbing down everyone else while putting Violet on a pedestal and making her be the smartest person in the entire world and I'm fed up with it. Yeah, I get that she was a scribe and was a very knowledgeable one, but does she have to be the ONLY person who knows things? I'd say the only other person who showed more intelligence than an old tomato sandwich was Aaric. If every scene is going to be showing off how smart and creative Violet is going to be, why is anyone else present? The ending was predictable. There's no way Rebecca can build up Xaden like that only for that ending to not happen. I do not wait for the 4th book with baited breath.