Rule of the Aurora King by Nisha J. Tuli

SPOILERS AHEAD

2/5 stars

Wow this series took a quick left turn... I really enjoyed the first book but this was a let down. I was struggling to get through about halfway through but I'm simply incapable of DNFing books for some reason. I quite literally could not count the amount of times I physically rolled my eyes or highlighted parts of the book that made me roll my eyes or internally cringe. The two felt like they were written by two entirely different authors.

I don't know if I've ever read a book with more repetition than this one. I understand building tension with the whole will they, wont they back and forth but oh my god was it getting old. All of the "why is he being so nice to me" and "I want him but I hate him, he's my enemy" and "I'm going to make her love me if it's the last thing I do" was so whiny and just made me more annoyed with both Lor and Nadir acting like weird little teenagers instead of grown ass 200+ year old adults. I would say 75% of this was Nadir and Lor bickering back and forth and I hardly even remember what happened while Nadir was parading her around his castle to try and hunt down The Crown that was obviously going to be in Heart all along because I simply didn't care.

I said in my review of the first book that I wasn't expecting any kind of beautiful work of literary art but this one was too hard to get through. I've never read about people winking so damn much, I swear they all have something in their eyes. And someone please tell me why the only nickname Nadir can come up with for Lor is "inmate", when he's supposed to be helping her move on from her trauma? This man just keeps pushing her so hard and trying to claim her as his at every second. Clearly they're mates, it's not very subtle, but damn. And I'm sorry but the "hate BJ" scene and all of the "tension" between Lor and Nadir was so icky and cringy to me. I simply did not care about their relationship.

I don't understand how Lor can feel her magic and how it responds so insanely to Nadir but then she has no access to it at all and keeps saying that she thought it was gone forever. There's just a lot of contradictory information so I never really know what's happening. And honestly for all of Nadir's years and supposed deception skills, they were so unbelievably dumb. Shouting Lor's real name out loud in the middle of the castle and bringing her siblings to a crowded downtown? Like use your damn brains for real .

I could not have cared less about Serce's POV. It was so slow and just dragged on and on and added literally nothing to the story. All that happened was her and Wolf (stupid name, by the way) fucking and the slowest build up and explanation to how she destroyed Heart and we still don't know what happened.

Aside from all of the plot and character development that was a let down, the writing was also a bummer. The sentence structure and flow of conversation just felt so stiff and un-edited. It was just really hard to get through because it never flowed or kept me overly engaged. It very rarely takes me longer than a week to read a book if I'm truly interested, and I'm impressed I made it through this one in two.

Just a letdown overall, and I don't think I'm going to read the rest of the series which is a bummer because the first one had so much potential.