Overall:  2.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 
Readability: 📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔 (I really expected more being fantasy like this but at the end I felt like I really didn’t know anything remotely beneath the surface of either main. Even with the love letters!)
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (The scenes were there – the explicitness was there – maybe I was hugely missing an emotional aspect? I just didn’t love the way they were written)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: There’s a bit? It’s not a super humorous book but there’s definitely some banter/back and forth
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: First contact through letters is about 6% in – they aren’t actually on page together until 25%
Cliffhanger: No this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, seven years later
Format: read e-book version on kindle unlimited

Should I read in order?
This is the first in the Fae Kings of Eden series.

Basic plot:
Rennick knows he has a mate at age 13. Letters arrive to her until her 25th birthday, when he comes in person to collect her.

Give this a try if you want:
- fantasy romance
- fated mates
- fae hero/human heroine
- epistolary
- well-endowed hero
- dark hero/villain hero
- connected emotions (they can feel each other’s strong emotions, even from a long distance)
- other woman/other man drama
- tattooed hero
- virgin hero (he doesn’t act like it though – they had ‘places they could go to watch and learn’)
- higher steam – 7 scenes

Ages:
- I think they are both around 25

First line:
Rennick didn’t know which frightened him more; the voices in his head no one else should hear, or the name those voices whispered and what it meant.

My thoughts:
Our author opens with
If you are looking for a literacy masterpiece, this might not be for you.
Now, I WASN’T looking for a literary masterpiece! And I can let so much go in a book. And this COULD/SHOULD have been so good to me. I was so hopeful. It had so many things I could have loved – it maybe implemented just a touch differently.

I feel bad but this book – I struggled so bad. I rage finished it.

It didn’t get too far in before I realized I was having a disconnect with the… writing style? I guess? So if you try it and don’t see any issues then my complaints probably won’t be relatable. And I truly hope you enjoy it if you try it.

Now I put off my review forever because I just could not open this book back up and go over all my notes. So I’ve definitely lost some of my rage disappointment since then and will hopefully be a bit more level-headed.

I never was able to like Rennick. He was like...the caricature of a villain hero. I wanted a villain hero – I wanted a dark main that was going to seduce our heroine through letters, and then burn the world down for her. I felt like I got an immature brat. Maybe reading the scenes of him being younger (the story starts and he’s 13 I think?) I just never left that head space, I don’t know.

When he’s 13/14 and he wants his mate NOW
When she explained why, his father agreed, but upon finding out the news, Rennick destroyed his father’s study in a fit of uncontrollable rage.

I liked Amelia a bit more than Rennick, but not much. I didn’t get much beneath the surface from her.

The writing – the 4 kingdoms are called Desert Kingdom, Mountain Kingdom, Tropical Kingdom, and Garden Kingdom. Guess what the human kingdom is called? Human Kingdom. I swear my mouth fell open when I read that. The only thing I could really get to know about these kingdoms were that they were...in the desert, in the mountains, in a tropical area, and...the garden kingdom was nice. And going in I was SO EXCITED that Applegate openly says she’s focused on characters and not the plot – That is what I love in romance! I don’t want a ton of political intrigue, or boring pages of telling of all the fantasy things...I like character focus. But I need more than whatever this is. It turns out I do have a minimum.

I enjoyed some of the letters. I LOVED THE IDEA OF THIS BOOK!! Oh my gosh epistolary exchanged between fated mates who cannot meet for a number of years???? It’s PERFECT for romance! But...I was so disappointed. The letters got weird. They didn’t drive up tension for me. Amelia went from hating him to suddenly falling in love with him after off page letters. WHAT? What made her fall in love with him? She just hated him! I wanted to fall in love with them! And you just gave me weird letters and took away the love and then just told me it was there… (argh I’m getting bitey all over again)

I also love jealousy in a hero. Even over the top. And even leading to murder, etc. And I get it’s marketed as morally black which means without conscience. But I struggled with him murdered an innocent side character. I just wish there had been the tiniest bit of push back from Amelia. But the fact that Amelia is the one that kind of encouraged it makes it worse. I guess that’s a line for me? If she had changed her mind and he had been forceful or something I would have had no issue…

Overall I wanted to love this book – it has so much that I could have loved – but I felt like I was reading an immature jealous (not in a good way – like I’m pretty sure they are going to be jealous of each other. Will he cut her hands off if she masturbates? 😂) relationship and it did not give me any feels or romance :( I am sad. Please don’t let my ranting deter anyone, it obviously has worked for so many, this is just my own personal take.

Now I’ll just drop some random quotes and thoughts

Rennick wasn’t a cruel man; he never had been. He was rational and level-headed, always thinking ten steps ahead, and the ability to rule came naturally to him. Everyone loved him, and he loved his kingdom.

Just because you say it doesn’t make it true. 😂Rennick has acted cruel and careless multiple times – it’s part of his morally black MO – and he’s also never been level-headed? It’s always very emotional – never thinks things over – just reacts. So none of this is ever shown, we’re just supposed to believe it when it goes against the scenes we’ve been given so far.
And immediately after that quote, ‘hot rage coursed through Rennick’s veins’ and he slices his throat. ‘Taking a life was nothing new.’ I just feel like all I’m given doesn’t totally add up to the character I’m shown. It’s kind of all over with whatever fits the current scene. And the actions don’t match the description we’re given of Rennick especially.
---

Amelia stood motionless as her brain slowly caught up to what he’d said and realized she didn’t know him at all. She’d been a fool to think that she did.

She just found out he might be royal fae. Instead of a regular fae. BUT YOU LOVE HIM!!! This just seemed like such an overreaction.

Yesterday she would have gone to the edge of Eden with him, but that was when she thought she knew him.
---
“I’m going to hell,” she muttered, hating herself for being unnaturally turned on my his words. Gilpin, please forgive me.
Rennick moved back to his side of the bed and turned on his side to face her. “If he was a good person, he rests now in an eternal paradise. If he wasn’t, he deserved to die anyway.”
The words were as simple and pragmatic as they were fucked up. She looked to the gods. “Please let us into the heavens when we die” Can we call it Good Person Kingdom?
---

“Stop threatening to kill people,” she whisper-yelled, calming slightly at his touch. “You can’t murder someone for not liking me. You would likely have no kingdom left.”
Oooo can we call it...Empty Kingdom?
---
She had to calm his insecurities before he burned the entire world to ash.

Nooooo then it will be Ash Kingdom (OKAY FINE I’LL STOP)
---
And here we get his clever endearment

“Do you remember the different pet names you tried out in your first letters? You always marked them out, but I could read them anyway.”
“Yes.” He laughed lightly. “I was nervous because I wanted it to be perfect.”
“It was.” She paused before asking him, “What made you decide on ‘love’?”

Love? That’s it? I love love as an endearment but don’t act like it was amazingly clever or original 😂
---
I do think this was one line I actually really adored in this book

Gods. He wanted to tell Ora to leave right then, but he knew his mate wanted to prove a point, something he would fuck her for later.

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- on page death of hero’s mother
- hero murders an innocent side character for holding the heroine’s hand (she was consenting and encouraged him)
- hero cuts a chunk of his arm out because the heroine said another woman touched him there

Author does have a link for content warnings – they include not suitable for under 18, graphic violence, graphic death, gore, orphaned female main character, loss of parent, the main characters both do a few morally black things to anything they deem a threat to their mating bond, explicit sexual scenes, mature language.

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

  No 

 
Hows the consent? 

  It’s good 

 
18% - there’s mention of Amelia losing her virginity – the hero knows because he can feel it
20% - Amelia has remembrance of Gilpin spilling his seed down her throat and then fucking her but no details (not the hero)
35% - 🔥oral for her, heroine sits on the hero’s face, her on top on his hand with his finger in her ass
44% - 🔥fingering for her
57% - 🔥oral for her, him standing/her on the bed sex followed by toy play (hero does the heroine with a dildo, biting (hero bites her neck)
66% - 🔥bj, him behind her holding the bedpost, anal dilators
83% - 🔥sex in the woods with the anal dilator still in
91% - 🔥bj with a facial, oral/fingering for her
95% - 🔥wedding night anal