Trigger Warnings: mention of difficult births and infant death, violence, death, attempted sexual assault (nothing graphic happens and it does not lead to something thankfully). The ending was phenomenal, but the rest of the book just dragged for me and I had trouble slogging through it.

Rain is the Crown Prince of Vesta and when Emma comes back into his life his world is turned upside down. With the past and secrets haunting them, Emma and Rainier had to tip toe around each other until they found a common ground to which they are able to settle down and be who they are. The romance wasn’t even rekindled yet and I was swoony for the things he was willing to do/how he showed he cared for the heroine. The only time the overarching plot is resurrected is in the last 20 pages of the book where everything goes to shit just so we can have a [checks notes] 800 page sequel. The book falls into soap opera territory, where NOTHING happens in the vast middle portion of the book except a LOT of internal monologing that is mostly rather silly and extremely repetitive.I’ll most likely pick it back up again because I do enjoy the characters a lot, but for now I just can’t seem to get through it unfortunately. Everyone feels real and the trauma of the main character is so thick I could taste it and it written so well!

This is the first fantasy romance I've read where the FMC, Emma, is a mother and sets out to rescue her teenaged daughter who was kidnapped.

Supposedly this book is about a woman in her early thirties (Emmaline) who is on a quest of sorts to find her kidnapped daughter. We are introduced to lots of family and friends along the way and they are all strong and interesting characters in themselves, you want to know more about them and I’m sure in the following books I won’t be disappointed. It doesn't feel very solid so I still need to understand how it works and what kind of magic abilities are there.