Stella Reads: Review: The Ring and the Crown by Melissa de la Cruz

First of all can we just take a moment to bask in the amazingness of this cover.

Ok so The Ring and the Crown was a quick, easy entertaining read to get me through my City of Heavenly Fire mourning period.

By the way I discovered this book through Christine (Xtinemay) of PolandBananasBooks who is a booktuber - if you don’t know who she is she please check her out her reviews are amazing!!

Concept

OK so im going to try and make this quick…it is the early 19^th Century and England rules the majority of Europe thanks to magic!! Yes magic. The Queen has a powerful ‘merlin’ aka magician on her side which has allowed her to defeat countless countries thus coming out on top (For my history nerds out there its similar to the Napoleonic Empire - kind've - but you know with magic). In order for the country to stay in power against the threatening power of Prussia, the Queens’ daughter Princess Marie, a sickly though smart and quick witted girl must marry the Prince who is essentially a Ken – everyone bloody loves him because he is smoking hot and is a fab fighter (basically he won a un-winable war). But this is where things get interesting of course there is a bit of drama because we have some side lovers that demand to be heard as well as jealous and magical best friends, a bad boy Prince who likes the odd fight or few, dreamy soldiers and American socialites ready for their shot at a posh English duke. Throw in some magic and you’ve got yourself the Ring and the Crown!

If my awesome and somewhat vague synopsis didn't really give what you were looking for here is the goodreads link (although I don't know why you'd need it)

Thoughts aka likes and dislikes

I was intrigued after finding out that Melissa De Cruz authored the book as the last series of hers I read was her Blood Bloods saga/fiasco. I started reading the books and really enjoyed them until I found out about some incest, the devil and random gap year/gung ho European getaway??? to say the least it got really, and I mean really, confusing so after a few attempts I gave up. But evidently The Ring and the Crown was enjoyable and for me was a page-turner. I found this a bit ironic because to me the majority of the plot twists were pretty predictable and the characters were entertaining although there wasn't much character development with the exception of Marie. You may be extremely confused at this point as it may seem like I am listing all the negatives of the book but I promise if was really good!! I think once of the main reasons I liked this book was that it reminded me of the guilty pleasure TV shows that I watched when I was 15 and still do now...

Also a quick word on the ending - it left me with the impression that it was a stand alone novel but lo and behold, it is not!! Essentially the 'cliff hanger' was pretty much non-existent - so essentially there is no compelling force within me that really NEEDS to read the sequel. In all honesty I just want to see the next cover.