Remember us, Heart. Remember it all.
Lightlark
Alex Aster
Lightlark, book one
ebook, 384 pages
Published August 23, 2022
ASIN B09S6JGRMH
ISBN 9781647006310
Welcome to the Centennial.
Every hundred years, the island of Lightlark appears for only 100 days to host a deadly game, where the rulers of six realms fight to break their curses and win unparalleled power. Each ruler has something to hide. Each curse is uniquely wicked. To break them—and save themselves and their realms—one ruler must die.
To survive, Isla Crown must lie, cheat, and betray. Even as love complicates everything…
When she fell in love with two enemies, in different times… she just doesn’t remember…Those were the words that inevitably made me decide to pick up this book. Triangles and throuples are not my thing. I've seen the Team Grim/Team Oro posts so I have some idea of what I'm in for. As far as the love interest is concerned that is.
I was not, however, prepared for intricacies of the plot. Less than ten percent in and I'd had so much information thrown at me that it felt like I was about to fail a test. Six cursed realms. Six cursed rulers. Thousands of years and five Centennials of failures.
Were they even trying?
Turns out, deciding which realm to end was just too hard.
Isla is a Wildling. Her kind is cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with and to survive on eating human hearts. She, however, is not. No curse, but also, no power. Also, she portals to other realma using her Starstick, a magical, ancient relic.
Grimshaw: a Nightshade. He is all that stands between the realms and a threat far greater than their curses.
Oro: a Sunling and king of Lightlark. Possesses the powers of all the realms but the sun will kill him.
Celesta: a Starling and Isla's secret ally. Cursed to a short lifespan of twenty-five years.
Azul: a Skyling. Their curse took their ability to fly.
Cleo: a Moonling and eldest of the rulers. They're cursed to be lured to drown in the ocean every full moon.
'Have we met?'
"If we had... it wouldn't have been just once."
"If we had... it wouldn't have been just once."
What is it you know, Grim? Who are you? More importantly, who are you to her?
Escorts her shopping. Feeds her chocolates. Tips her off to the necessity of a sword. Well he certainly hit the ground running.
For most of this book... it's quite dull. I had to shift to audiobook because my eyes kept wandering from the words on the page.
Isla and Celeste, bless their hearts, have their own plan for breaking the curses on their realms. The youngest of the rulers, first time participates in the Centennial, think they have it all figured out and a good chunk of the book revolves around that doomed to fail plot line.
Did that stop me from ordering Grim and Oro's Dual Crowns book that released while I was working my way through this book? No. It did not.
Because, to absolutely no one's surprise, the leading males are the gravity to this book. Grim is delicious. Dark, brooding, and shrouded in mystery, he's everything I'm attracted to in an MMC. Oro...
Oh, Oro.
He is not so different than Grim. There's a play on enemies-to-lovers in his relationship to Isla. They clash while Isla and Grim seem to blend. Oro is not above using Isla to further his own gain. A fact that urged me to slap Isla upside her crowned head when she deigned to assert that Oro "hadn't really betrayed" her. Tf he didn't! She divulges her most concealed secret, that which has reduced her to a prisoner of her own realm, and not twenty-four later, Oro is announcing it to those that have the most to gain by exploiting it. But he's never lied to her and to Oro, and oddly to Isla as well, that apparently makes up for his transgression against her.
Mister... the way I want to drag you into the sun.
Isla is a terrible judge of whom to trust. Which is why the epic betrayal at the end shouldn't have surprised me. Because I expected that person to die anyway. Somehow it did. Maybe because that person wasn't the person we'd been led to believe they were. It was the how of it, and not the who of it. It was a nice twist; I do love a good female villain.
And why the hell are you spitting at Grim? He maneuvered you like a pawn to save both of your realms but you, Isla, would have sacrificed yourself to save everyone? That's one hell of a twisted outlook. Someone *has* to die but not once did Isla ever offer the Wildling realm as the sacrifice.
She trusts no one but Oro now.
The love of the FMC is a fickle thing.
She's doomed.
The author is a liar and a deceiver. Trust nothing she says and no character she writes.
3 out of 5 stars
Available in ebook | hardcover | paperback | audiobook
2025/48
