★★★★☆

I had vaguely heard of The Bridge Kingdom prior to picking it up on a whim this month, but never knew the story or had any particular impression of it. I gobbled up this story fairly quickly and the more I sit with it, the more I find how much I enjoyed it. As I said, I knew absolutely nothing about this before I picked it up. And this may be in the top fantasy romance books (“romantasy” as the kids say) I’ve read in the past few years.

The first chapter sucked me into the story and had me wanting more, it lost me for a few chapters in the beginning, but quickly picked back up with many fun twists and turns throughout the story. I found myself needing to read more before I went to bed. This was some of the best political fantasy writing I’ve read in a while as well.

The trade and economic policy was interesting and I was not expecting this bridge to be so interesting. Although, I did get lost a few times with all the different kingdoms and their differing dynamics, why did they all have to have such similar names!

The main character felt like a classic fantasy heroine, empowered, strong, “armed to to the teeth,” but also falls head over heels for the love interest and realigns her worldview. I yearn for characters with a little more gumption, a little more intrigue to their character, because at this point they all seem to blend together into these strong female warriors. So at times her character was a bit flat, except for her one fatal flaw, that almost takes her a few times throughout. I liked the slow burn to this, it was much closer to an enemies-to-lovers storyline than other novels, although this was more assassin-to-lover.

I look forward to reading the next book in the series and seeing where the story goes from there.