To Kill A Kingdom: by Alexandra Christo Review

I went into this book with relatively low expectations, mainly due to the fact that I haven’t had brilliant experiences with mermaid/siren books in the past. However, upon reading the first few chapters, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The world building was particularly great, pulling me into the world of Lira and Elian.

The story is told from the POV of Elian and Lira, both of which are distinct and recognisable as there own voice. I found myself looking forward to Liras POV slightly more, I just enjoyed reading her narrative and thought process slightly more.

The relationship between Lira and the sea queen intrigued me greatly, and I loved reading scenes between the two. The relationship is twisted and fragmented, the sea queen attempting to craft Lira into the perfect merciless killer. She casts out Lira, demanding she bring back Elians heart in order to return to her, creating great tension, as obviously, for an amount of time, Lira wants to Kill Elian. Watching her struggle and grapple with this was riveting and interesting to see her thoughts when she had chances to take his life, and didn’t, showing redemption and a huge jump in her character arc.

When reading I did enjoy back and forth verbal sparring between Elian and Lira, and was rooting for the good old from Hate to Love trope to win out, however, when thinking back after I finished the book, their romantic relationship seemed somewhat empty to me. It wasn’t really established, and seemed to happen rather suddenly all in the last few chapters of the book, feeling quite rushed and unfulfilling when thinking back on the arc as a whole.

Overall, I did enjoy this book whilst reading, and found the story to be good with intriguing elements, it was just looking back on certain character arcs that left me wanting slightly more and slightly unfulfilled (please don’t hate me if you loved Lira and Elian, this is just my opinion!!)

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