Road to Fire
by Maria Luis
"I'm not scared of you."
He meets my gaze. "You should be."
All of England knows his name.
I’m not looking for a knight in shining armor when I approach Saxon Priest for a job, but there’s no preparing for the reality of meeting London’s most heartless villain in the flesh.
His eyes are cold, his mouth scarred when he dismisses me as fragile, weak.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
Beneath my sunny smile, there’s nothing I won’t do to protect my family . . . even if it means facing off against a notorious killer. He tells me to run. I refuse to tremble in fear.
He warns me that I could never handle him.
I can’t help but wonder what it would take to see him break.
Saxon is everything I should hate—
And the last man I should ever want.
But when he risks everything to save me, I succumb to the ice in his veins and the blistering heat that tethers us together.
Saxon Priest may be the devil in disguise but I’m Isla Quinn, and I killed the king.
Spice Level: 4/6 | Story Score: 8.5/10 | Rating: 5/5 |
The second book in this series popped up somewhere for me and I LOVED the title. While I generally don’t even pay attention to if I need to read a series in order, somehow I decided I should read the first one on this one first. Um, glad I did. Lol. While this book tells a whole story, it does not tell THE WHOLE story. Ya know? There is an overarching story that spans (I assume) all three books, but each book is about a different brother and you get his whole story. Confused? Sorry.
This book is set in an alternate England. The Parliament is weak and failing, the King is cruel and failing, and there are all kinds of political dissonance displays. Isla was personally affected by a riot that broke out due to political unrest and resulted in her losing her parents. Because of that, she decides the King needs to pay and she assassinates him. That’s all in the blurb. It’s background, not the plot of the book. In this, she wants to help the rebellion against the Crown (which is now the dead king’s daughter), so she goes to a known-rebellion bar and asks for a job. She meets Saxon - one owner of the bar.
Saxon’s family has been sworn to protect the crown for generations…by running this bar, it’s a bit of a “keep your enemies close” scenario.
So, she thinks they are working towards the same goal, he is just trying to keep her alive, then she’s just trying to keep him alive, and political chaos ensues.
Honestly, this one threw me for a loop. Not the storyline specifically, because honestly, it’s pretty standard for a political thriller. Ya know, opposing sides fall for one another. Someone’s always lying. Yada, yada. But while I’ve watched a lot of political thrillers, I’ve never read one. It was different for me. The story is fully formed. Honestly, this is a book where the plot is much more important than the smut, lol. I’m not going to lie, I had trouble not reading at top speed through the first part of the book because i just wanted to get to the love story. There is so much to learn and I don’t suggest speed reading through this one. You lose a lot and then you’re sad that you missed it. By the time the love story started, I had to take a break so that I could come back to it and read at a slower pace so I could enjoy it. Honestly, I told my husband about this book and even told him that this is a book I could put on my very selective list of books I would recommend that he read. The writing was almost poetic at parts and my highlighted sections are so freaking long. Entire conversations.
The smut was not plentiful, but it was awesome. I was really concerned about this because it’s stated several times, by different characters, that Isla isn’t going to be able to handle Saxon. They make him sound very savage and I just wasn’t in the right headspace for the MMC to hurt the FMC. He never says that he WANTS to break her though, just that he knows he will or that he’s scared he will. They explain his background with women which makes sense for his proclivities. Uh, what I wasn’t expecting was Isla. For every time Saxon was like, “I’m going to destroy you,” Isla just looked at him and said, “You’re welcome to try.” This woman, y’all. She was awesome. Anything Saxon wanted to dish out, she was ready to match him pace for pace and the scenes worked for me. So good.
Which brings us to the characters, who I liked. They made sense coming from the backgrounds that they did. There wasn’t anyone in here that didn’t make sense and I feel like that sensibility is UNCOMMON in “romance” books. This book also introduced us to Saxon’s brothers: Guy and Damien. I’m excited to read their books. I will absolutely finish this series. I’m not in a hurry yet because book three doesn’t come out until next month, but I WILL come back to this one. It’s on the short list.
-SPOILERS-
Ok, so I knew it was coming. When Isla admits that she murdered the king, and Saxon just wants her to stop saying it, and then Guy hears it…WE KNOW that Saxon is going to have to do something about it. We know. Then he’s subdued as they leave his house and then he’s leading her away…then he’s locking her in a cell and gah, my heart broke. I was as heartbroken as Isla was. Some of the conversations in that place hurt me too. Her telling him that he has to be the one to kill her was so gutting. When he told her that he would always put the crown first, before her, I shattered a bit.
I was definitely feeling some kind of way about these scenes. I can’t say that they played out how I wanted them to, but I wasn’t angry about them. Then, once he gets her out, I really thought that he would leave to join her. I was surprised when that didn’t play out how I imagined, so that surprise was refreshing.
Book #1 in the Broken Crown series | 435 Pages | Trope Challenge: Politics |
“Because I would take everything that you are and make it mine. Your beauty, your humanity, your fire. I’d fill every broken and misshapen part of me with you until there’s nothing left.” He laughs, a dark, gritty sound that tangles my fear and desire into a web that has no exit point, or understanding, but just is. “A man like me steals what he wants, Isla, and with every piece of you that I took, I would still demand more, until you begged me for freedom.”
-Saxon, Road to Fire by Maria Luis
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