Queen Among the Dead by Lesley Livingston is a captivating, dual POV story with rich, Irish folklore world building and a cool, deeply complex magic system.

I’ll be honest with you - this was hard as heck to get into. There’s a lot of intense world building and fantasy politics and hard to pronounce names. BUT! Im actually so so happy I stuck with it, because it was so worth it. I couldn’t put this book down because every time I did, I would miss the world and the characters so much.

Ugh. The CHARACTERS. The FMC Neve was a fiery, hot-headed, spitfire (puns intended, iykyk) princess who would rather be a fighter than a queen, like her older sister and polar opposite will be (gotta love the strong sister relationship trope). Neve is more of a king than a queen - literally the definition of my favorite female archtype.

And then there’s Ronan. RONAN. I am so in love. He’s a thief with magic in his blood (did someone say royal falls for the commoner trope??) and a heart of gold. Something draws them together, but things go wrong every time. There were things I didn’t like about the book, but they were all masked by my LOVE of him.

Read for intricate world building, tense & thrilling fantasy politics, and a 🔥🐺🏹 girl meets a 🖤🌊🗡 boy romance subplot.

Thank you to @netgalley for an eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review.