Nya Jerami and Johan von Braustein are both characters we've met previously in this series. Nya Jerami is from Thesolo and is most known in her country for her father's attempt to poison the heroine in the first book. Johan is literally a red-headed stepchild, mostly known for being a party prince whose mother had a great romance with the king but then fell tragically ill. Both of them are scarred by their pasts. Nya spends almost as much time on dating games as she does in real life and Johan hides his kind heart behind a hard-partying exterior, mostly so he can protect his brother. But both their situations are coming to a head. And it ends with a fake engagement. Well, that's toward the first third of the book so there's really a lot that comes after including some huge revelations about Nya's father and the brother that Johan is trying to protect.Yes, this book is about royals but there are themes that affect the larger population for sure. People who are judged by the sins of their parents, people who don't quite fit in with how they are supposed to behave, etc. and I think Cole does a pretty good job of handling them.
Four stars
This book comes out April 30th
ARC kindly provided by publisher and Edelweiss
