Emoji Review by Rebecca Dixon
I just finished ‘City of Thorns,’ the first book in The Demon Queen Trials by CN Crawford and we have a winner, winner, chicken dinner folks!! 🙌🏻 😆
OK! So that may be a bit QUIRKY of an opening 😅 … but TRUST ME! It’s totally fitting with this FMC! Quirky is in this gal’s DNA (among other things 🤔😁😆?!)
So this book starts of with a college age FMC who tries to do well in school 🏫 so she can be accepted into an undergraduate school beyond “city limits!” But that’s where the normalcy stops and the originality kicks in! 👏🏻 This ain’t no normal graduate school… it’s in the City of Thorns … a demon 👹 ruled city where mortals either serve demons or pretty much get tossed into the BURNING RAIN OF DEATH 😲😲😲!!! (ok 😂, it’s really burning flames 🔥 in a pit … but I was totally feeling Hocus Pocus at the moment 🤪!) But WAIT ✋🏻! Before we even get started in an Academy themed book (thank GOODNESS, my TBR is already full of them 😆,) the plotline changes course when a hunky powerful 💪🏻 demon swoops up all in there and then a case of mistaken SUCCUBUS 💋 identity (or is it 🤷🏻♀️, I still don’t know 😂 !) causes our girl to enter the city in an entirely different, CAPTIVE-ating way!
Ok, so first off! This FMC is FUN 🤩. I actually posted in the author’s FB page after reading the first few chapters stating, “Me thinks Christine (one of the authors) had A LOT to do with the quirkiness of Rowan in City of Thorns.” Because if you follow the author on FB (and you totally should, they are super fun 🤩,) you’ll DEFINITELY notice similarities between this FMC and our beloved author 💜. So back to the FMC! OMG 😂. I literally cackled out loud during a certain dungeon scene ! 🤣🤣🤣 And let’s just say, this girl takes safety ⛑ preparations to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL and I’m LOVING it 👏🏻👏🏻😂! (FYI it TOTALLY puts my Safety Engineer Dad, who is literally a rocket 🚀 scientist in real life, to shame! 😲😅 … and yup, he did make my whole family memorize FIRE 🔥 EXIT maps in every hotel we stayed at growing up! 😆 … but I digress 😂…)
So! Not only did I love 💕 this FMC, I REALLY loved ❤️ our broody, vengeance driven MMC! 🙌🏻 His sharp intake of breaths and the enemies-to-lovers heat 🔥 between these two is SIZZLING 🥵! Let’s just say that romantic tension that CN Crawford is so great at, didn’t disappoint! 👏🏻 Not only do we get this sharp tongued, doesn’t miss a thing 🔥 MMC … we also get another handsome 🥵 contender who’s searing eyes 👀 scream across the room at our girl! SWOON!! This doesn’t appear to be a love triangle, but I’m not completely writing it off yet! And to be honest, I’ll totally take it! 😁😁😁
But what about the story?! Well! This is what I’d consider more along the lines of an enemies-to-lovers, slow-burn romance that takes place in a world similar to ours and circles around a mistaken/unknown identity trope! And let me tell you! This mistaken identity plotline is super great! 🤩 Really entertaining 😆! Watching our girl “explore” her ID is a heck of a lot of fun 🥳! Heck, the entire plotline is pretty great! It’s SMART💡. I have never learned so much about psychology in my life 😅! And the way the FMC handles her precarious situation, is super CLEVER 🧠 and made me crack-up when she whipped out her arsenal of MacGyver worthy workarounds 🗡🥽🧯! 🤣🤣🤣
This plotline actually covered A LOT of ground in ONE book! I was actually thinking that this one book held probably three books of content compared to other series I’ve read! It moves pretty fast (in a great way 🙌🏻) and answered waaaay more questions than I ever expected for a first book! But it also left us with the perfect amount of mystery 🔎 at the end! And OH BOY THAT ENDING! 🙌🏻 SO AWESOME 🤩🤩🤩! Yesssssssss 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I actually had an “Awwww that is pretty freaking cool 😎” moment at the end where the entire book felt like it came full circle! I can just tell that every detail was so thought out by the authors & I am totally crazy about books like that! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
So if you love a pretty original fantasy plotline with a FMC who has a quirkiness 🤪 that goes on for days, a broody smokin 🔥 MMC, a steamy slow-burn enemies-to-lovers vibe, some pretty SMART 💡mystery in the story, and SUCCUBUS 💋💋💋 mistaken/unknown identity… give this a shot! It’s free on KU and you never know, it may be the next book to SEDUCE YOU!
