Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig
Series: The Shepherd King (Book 2)
Released on October 17, 2023
Pages: 430
Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️ (Mild to moderate)
👑👑 Tropes and Themes
🍂Enemies to lovers
🍂Tremendous character growth in all 4 main characters and even the Nightmare
🍂Friendship and Family strength
🍂Fairytale retelling throughout this book was so much fun
🍂Magic with consequences
👑👑 Why will you love reading this book. series….
To say that this book opens the reader into a deep dark and magical place is possibly an understatement. The magic with consequence theme is a new one for me and I absolutely loved it. Old magic and triggered magic for specific intent create the type of hype that has your mind screaming “Use the card! Use the card!”
The relationships of the main characters to one another, prior to romantic entanglement were so strong with family being the strongest theme to fall in love with.
Finally, you'll love this book because the enemies are truly villains. Horrific souls that give the reader a person(s) to hate for 430 pages!
👑👑 Characters to cheer on….
So there are several stand out characters in this book but for me there is only one stand alone character and that was the Nightmare. He's witty and sarcastic, loathsome and lovable, lost and found. He is the greatest growth character and binds the rest of the characters together.
👑 Other characters though are….
Elspeth - MFC and the heroine of the book. She has a smart mouth on her and doesn't bend to the pressure she is put under. Her weaknesses become her strengths and her loyalty to the Nightmare creates a secondary enemy to friendship theme
Ravyn - multi layered character of several masks and performances. Kings Captain of the guard, highwayman, lover, friend, cousin, and someone seeking to bring about great change
Nightmare - 500 years dead, the soul inside Elspeth. He goes through so much change that it would be a mistake to shed light on any of it before you read the book! By far my favorite character in any book I've read.
👑👑 Favorite quote:
“Nothing comes for free”
👑👑 Final Thoughts….
This series was recommended to me because I loved the dark romantasy of the Belladonna series by Adalyn Grace. I am so glad that I read them and fully recommend it to anyone who thinks they've read all the dark stories out there. It is a deliciously dark, spooky and treacherous journey from dark to light, bad to good and recognition of how choices are always yours but not always something you can live with!
