The Hemlock Queen 3.75⭐️3🌶️

Second book

Fantasy Romance

Love triangle

God Magic

Religious history

Politics

Flashbacks

Treachery

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ side character rep

Slow burn

The book starts off right after the end of the first book. I appreciate how quickly there is a sort of recap of the end of the last book. You can see the author put the effort in to be sure we remembered all the loose ties. 

This book was a good second book. There wasn’t as much of a second book syndrome as I expected. It could have been…. More. And that is frustrating.

I felt like there was less angst and love triangle in this book. Maybe because everyone was straight up avoiding each other. And a true triangle seemed to come out of nowhere. So that struggle that was so prevalent in the first book was tamped down to a trickle and I’m a little disappointed by that. It just felt under developed.

The character arcs were all compelling and the struggle between god and mortal was very interesting. But we just lost some of the luster because of each internal struggle. This could also be because the characters stepped up reluctantly into positions of power… and things that seemed to be driving character traits seemed to change, even in moments when we were seeing them clearly. I’m loving the full arcs of the side characters… but I’m also terrified for them. I like that they are all flawed.

I wish there had been a little more magic interaction. It’s described so interestingly in the first book, and we only see that level of detail twice in this book. I wanted so much more of the rich visualization of the magic I’ve come to love in Hannah Whitten’s writing.

The world-building was decently done. I found the magical foundation to be interesting. 

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit for an eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.