Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a copy to review!

This book was a quick read and thoroughly enjoyable. The characters were well-developed and the plot moved rather quickly. The ending was a cliffhanger, so I am going to seek out the sequel to see what happens next! :)

Caught by a trafficking ring, unable to remember anything, suddenly rescued by prince. The beginning of this novel certainly sounds amazing and action packed. And "Intricate Deceptions" indeed started out great, but failed to really impress me. To begin with, I am still unsure about the setting. Due to messengers being sent and the sheer amount of castles and royalty, I consistently thought this was medieval times. However, there is the occasional plastic water bottle, car or gun. Are those mistakes, then, or is the setting modern?

The more major issue I had was characterization. In the beginning, it was okay that Gaia does not fight much - she has amnesia, after all, and is traumatized. But even later, she is often passive, does not fight back and seems weak. Maybe that comes from her being so flat and empty as a character. We know next to nothing about her: it seems ooc for her both to fight and to hold back. She does not fight enough to be a badass female character, but too much to be a traumatized princess.

That was a problem many other characters shared. There was backstory, sure, and witty dialogue and action - but we learned nothing about the "why" of certain actions, the motivation, the internal struggles, etc. On top of that, there were too many subplots and a lot of YA tropes. And when the whole thing was topped with an out-of-nowhere cliff hanger, my rating crashed down to two out of five stars.