“The Cerise,” by Bailey Black

Khiara is on a mission to find the man who killed her family and end him. Her plans were derailed by a man in the woods and her partner ends up being put into the Crown’s dungeon. In order to save him she enters the Culling, to win the chance of being Queen. She doesn’t actually want to marry the prince or crown, but she needs to get her partner out of the dungeon before anyone finds out she’s a Cerise.

I really liked this book. I loved the characters, and I was glued to the book to see if she was going to do everything without it going bad. The storyline was really good, solid and interesting the entire time, very fast paced. I didn’t like how the book ended right when it got so good, and I cannot wait to read the second book in the Kingdom of lies series. 4 out of 5 stars.

-Magic
-Witches
-Enemies To Lovers
-Marriage Selection

Thank you for the free copy, Netgalley.

I enjoyed this book so much. In a world where everyone hates witches, even your family, it was a beautiful tale of tension, mystery and femine rage and revenge.
The two love interest is my favorite thing, it's not exactly a love triangle but it's not a why choose and I am here for it!

it started off so well, so promising, and it all fell apart in front of my eyes 😵‍💫


Bash was so cute and would have been a great love interest if not for the forced love triangle and forced romance with the other guy. he was nice, funny, sarcastic, protective, respectful.... I feel robbed (again. I was also rooting for the prince in Throne of Glass)


I kinda lost all interest after the other guy became a love interest tbh we had a good thing going with the prince but he was made to be irrelevant and boring while the reader's encouraged to find the other guy hot and broody but really he's just rude and.... there. he's just there a lot and doesn't do anything out of the ordinary yet she's all flustered constantly


Kiara was really cool at first, her personality, her past, her morals, her powers and her actions all together made her loveable. that was until she suddenly changes all of her principles and personality and goes from "Men made me suffer too much I'm traumatized and will never let a man touch me romantically" to "Oh he's cute I feel all warm inside, I want him to touch me" in the span of 3 days. two different guys kiss her without her consent on separate occasions and she doesn't even bat an eye???? even without her trauma it warrants a reaction like come on!


(she falls. a LOT. and there's always an attractive man around to conveniently catch her and gaze into her eyes)


the TIMING was ridiculous especially with the romance aspect. miss girl has known the two guys for a grand total of 4 days before being so horny she jumps both, and not 10 minutes after facing the man who traumatized her SEVERELY years ago she's fantasizing about kissing the love interest. it felt a lot like forced romance, just throwing that in there when really she needed more time to develop feelings and process her trauma. another example, she meets the other girls and thinks "I won't be friends with any of them I can't trust them" right before immediately befriending one of the girls. she makes no sense whatsoever

+ don't know if that qualifies as a timing issue but I'll include it nonetheless, on two separate occasions she's having tension with the guy like sexy insinuations and BOOM it's broken by her hungry stomach making noise and him making her dinner. it felt like the author didn't know how to get out of the scene, what dialogue to add after the sexy comment so she panicked and redirected them to the kitchen


the plot itself was nice, especially with the guy who traumatized her, I wish that was more central to the story, but felt a bit reused and all over the place. to sum it up (it won't be summarized at all) she's trying to find a cure to save her cursed friend so she enrolls in a competition to become the prince's wife but she hates the royal family bc they killed her family and she wants to kill the man responsible but he's here in the castle threatening her and she's crushing on two guys but she has powers, more than she's supposed to have, what's up with that so she reads books to figure it out and one of the guys is supposed to hunt her kind, but also the king may have committed mass murder for some reason and she wants to find out why

as I said it's a lot. let me sum it up again in tropes and plot elements I found in this book to be similar to other books

The Selection : girls competing to marry the prince, with him going on dates with each of them etc

Throne of Glass : love triangle with the prince and his best friend who's also his guard

I can't think of any other really but I felt both of their influence heavily throughout the book


overall the story needed more TIME I can't stress this enough, the first 50% of the book is all happening in 24 hours!!!! and by the end I'm not sure even a week has passed. it's a good thing to give a character emotional baggage and trauma especially when relevant to the plot BUT it needs to be taken into account, you can't put her through the same tropes characters with less baggage go through, it's not plausible. someone was assaulted (and based all of her life on getting revenge for it) won't be at the center of a love triangle in 3 days and begging a man to take her right here and there. bring back her hatred for men pls

I found this book to be confusing and chaotic. There are many plot holes and the writing did not flow well.

The premise of the plot was great and I think it really could have been something if there was more focus on the flow. I was getting irritated with the plot holes and ended up DNF'ing at 70%.

This book starts strong, and does hook the reader in. I loved Khiara as a FMC - she is badass.

However, the book is way too fast paced for the first in a series. There's minimal world building, and the magic system (while a very interesting concept) was not explained enough. I had completely forgotten about hunters, and radicals are mentioned a couple of times but it's never explained who they are or what their motives would be.

I'm not usually a fan of love triangles, but this one felt kind of like the right fit for the characters. I'm just disappointed there was no slow burn or build up to anything. The sex scene felt very abrupt and came out of nowhere.

Overall, an enjoyable read with a fresh plot - but I feel it should have been fleshed out a little more.

2.5 Stars - rounding up to 3. This book was slow and only really picked up halfway through. From the synopsis, I thought that this would be something that I really enjoyed but it just felt flat, the characters were not fully formed.

Review:
I started to read this book with very high expectations and I do think that was my downfall.
Too many expectations only lead to slight disappointment.
The book starts on the right foot, and then it is like taking a fall into a huge drop only to pick up again.
The main character Khiara is shown to be something in the beginning, "telling" us the reader that she was supposed to be this badass revenge seeker. But most of her actions fall flat off what she could've been if she was more grounded and less 2D. I don't this is an isolated issue (Because a lot of romantasy) tend to fall into this trend. Not saying I don't enjoy them once in a while.
I do think there's a lot to enjoy. It's like how the story starts to pick up and there's no time to breathe (IN a good way!). The characters are fairly likable and there's a moment when I started to question their intentions (Which kept me at the end of my seat).
Worldbuilding-wise, I think it was not very expanded. A lot needed to be worked on (geography didn't make sense) but that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
I do see the resemblance in the book it was compared to (But i wish they stopped doing that).

The story has moments where it's hard to follow the train of thought and sequence of events. There would be jumps from one to scene to another without a smooth transition. This was a very fast paced book and maybe that's why some scenes felt like they shifted without notice. I liked the story but the romantic plot made frustrated at moments.

I enjoyed this book ! There was a breath of fresh air with the plot. I think the writing hooked me in from the beginning as it’s very descriptive. The world building was well done and I am excited to see where this author goes !

The plot holes in this book are overwhelming. The whole concept of the magic system is overthrown in seconds. And while this book has potential, it's too underdeveloped. I am interested in the sequel to see if it starts being more cohesive.

Disclaimer! I received this book through NetGalley. But all opinions are my own.

This was an amazing, fast paced read! I loved the characters and the world presented in this plot. After reading the blurb, I knew I had to check this book out, and I am so glad I had the chance to read it! After the ending, I am excited to read future books by this author!

Like most fantasy, this book has a slow start, and a slow build.

I wish I'd known I was going into a love triangle - that's not my preference. I think this book does need some TW, and readers should be aware of such, but it's not a bad start. It's about as spicy as a medium hot sauce - a little clumsy for the first scene, and better in the second. The cliffhanger was something though. Good way to leave readers wanting for the follow up.

It was fast paced, gripping and a wonderful read!

The characters and this world are amazing, I just fell in love with it all.

The premise sounded so unique and interesting to me, and I was not let down, especially in the second half of this book, the pace really picks up.

I ran out of time to finish this book and I was actually quite devastated because I was really enjoying it. I would have loved to see how this book turned out and it was really different from some of the other fantasy books I’ve read. I tried to purchase it but couldn’t get my hands on a copy which was also quite sad.

DNF at 27%

I dislike it when a book is short but takes forever to get to like anything that’s said in the synopsis. Or just slow pace in a short book in general. When I started realising this had that, I started thinking of not finishing it. Once I’d started thinking that I saw the main character wasn’t really making sense and the bit of the world-building I’d read also didn’t add up.

For instance, the main character, Khiara, has red hair – which in this world means shes a witch. She has to hide it because that’s very dangerous and she’d likely be killed. Then her red hair gets uncovered and… those who see it are… totally fine with it. All right, granted, it was in a sexual manner. Khiara was one of those characters who’s written to be all fierce and “I’m going to do what I want” and the book showed none of that. Plus everything else was all tell, not show.

I can’t wait to read the next book! I read this in one sitting. I did have a little bit of confusion with some plot points but overall with how easy and fun of a read this was, it ultimately was not a big deal.

Can we also talk about Riot?? I am OBSESSED. 🫶🏻

Thank you for letting me read and review this ARC!

4 ⭐ 2 🌶

I'll be honest, I was a bit concerned after reading reviews before I started my ARC... For the first 10% I wondered if I should have just DNF'd it from the getgo.. But I actually loved this story so much. Did Khiara say Cerise entirely too often for the first half? Sure. But other than that I found this world and the plot to be fascinating.

I went from thinking this was a MF story, to going ohhh maybe an MFM, and to finally realizing we were stuck in a good old love triangle. I won't spoil anything, but I'm pretty solid in my choice as we reached the end and have some very suspicious feelings about the other...

The spice was.... Interesting. The first scene was a touch cringe, but the second was much better. Really hoping we continue in that direction. The initial scene felt like the author wanted it to be that grey area between fade to black and just a bit spicy. Not using hard core terms and such... Then all of a sudden she was squirting on his face and I got some whiplash. Second was better. For sure...

The cliffhanger left us HANGING. By a thread. Like WHAT?! I'm officially chomping at the bit for book two. Gimme.

Witches, magic, revenge, and you just never know what your path will bring. Fun and fast paranormal adventure, kind of midevil feel.

This would have been a four stars, but the one scene made it drop, because honestly that portion was just a bit rough to read, it was a hurry up read this section and let's go. If that would be cleaned up a bit better (like potentially more realistic, or sexier or something?) then it would be back to four starts.

Did not expect a love triangle. Didn't expect it to be also a lot of revenge and magic (yes I expected some but not to this level). Was I invested? Yes. Did I enjoy the characters? Yes. Will I read the next one? Yes.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for my DRC in exchange for my honest review.

3/5

The Cerise follows our fiery, stubborn main character Khiara. Since birth, red hair has made her a target, but after a tragic night when she gains powers, she can finally become the hunter. On the last part of her mission for revenge, something goes terribly wrong and now Khiara must decide how far she’s willing to go to save her friend.

Look. The bones are there. The world is there. The plot is there. This book just needs work on its execution.

I liked the bits about the lore and how the author didn’t spell everything out too much and is letting readers draw their own conclusions.

There’s some really good characters in here too. The love triangle did not make sense to me however.

Also. That cliffhanger? I know I read the ebook so it’s hard to tell where I am in the book. But that came out of noooowhere.

All that said, I AM interested in seeing where this story goes. I have high hopes for the sequel.