Lisa Loves Literature: Blog Tour Review with Giveaway: Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers

Monday, February 4, 2019

Blog Tour Review with Giveaway: Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers

Book info:

Title: Courting Darkness
Author: Robin LaFevers
Series: Courting Darkness duology #1 (sequel to His Fair Assassin trilogy)
Genre: YA historical fantasy
Release Date: February 5th, 2019
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Source: ARC received from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating: 5 stars

Synopsis:
Death wasn’t the end, it was only the beginning…

Sybella has always been the darkest of Death’s daughters, trained at the convent of Saint Mortain to serve as his justice. But she has a new mission now. In a desperate bid to keep her two youngest sisters safe from the family that nearly destroyed them all, she agrees to accompany the duchess to France, where they quickly find themselves surrounded by enemies. Their one ray of hope is Sybella’s fellow novitiates, disguised and hidden deep in the French court years ago by the convent—provided Sybella can find them.

Genevieve has been undercover for so many years, she struggles to remember who she is or what she’s supposed to be fighting for. Her only solace is a hidden prisoner who appears all but forgotten by his guards. When tragedy strikes, she has no choice but to take matters into her own hands—even if it means ignoring the long awaited orders from the convent.

As Sybella and Gen’s paths draw ever closer, the fate of everything they hold sacred rests on a knife’s edge. Will they find each other in time, or will their worlds collide, destroying everything they care about?

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD

See where it all began! Grab the His Fair Assassin Trilogy now! You don’t need to read these to read Courting Darkness but they’re amazing!

Grave Mercy- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD, My Review

Dark Triumph- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD, My Review

Mortal Heart- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD, My Review

My Review:
Delving back into the world of the assassins of Saint Mortain was something I'd been looking forward to ever since I heard about this book. I was worried I'd be unsure of who was who, but it wasn't hard to join with the characters at the stage they were in. Truly, Sybella had been my favorite, even if her book wasn't my favorite. The other main character in this book, Genevieve, took me a little bit to come around to. But once I did, I was rooting for her, and hoping that she could have a romance herself, with Maraud, the prisoner she'd rescued from the dungeon, even if the rescue was only to serve her own purposes. Now when something happened in the book, I kind of assumed it was going to be the prisoner, I won't say what happened, so maybe you won't expect what I did. So when we did find out who he was, well, all the little puzzle pieces started to fall into place.

The author is great about keeping certain details from coming out until moments that will have the reader gasping in surprise! The other thing I love is all the history that is interwoven throughout the plot. The author has a note at the end that does clear up what is actually true and what she had to adjust and tweak to fit her story. Not only is there an afterward talking about the history of the story, but there is a letter at the beginning to the readers, talking about what motivated her to write further in this world. It was a touching note, with some deep topics and worth reading.

The ending of the book left me on the edge of my seat, satisfied with this reunion of some of my favorite characters, but sad that I'll be waiting until 2020 to see what will happen with where we left off.

About the Author:

Robin LaFevers was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales, Bulfinch’s mythology, and 19th century poetry. It is not surprising she grew up to be a hopeless romantic.

Though she has never trained as an assassin or joined a convent, she did attend Catholic school for three years, which instilled in her a deep fascination with sacred rituals and the concept of the Divine. She has been on a search for answers to life’s mysteries ever since.

While many of those answers still elude her, she was lucky enough to find her one true love, and is living happily ever after with him in the foothills of southern California.

In addition to writing about teen assassin nuns in medieval Brittany, she writes books for middle grade readers, including the Theodosia books and the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series. You can learn more about those books at www.rllafevers.com.

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Giveaway: