LIGHTLARK By Alex Aster

I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Welcome to the Centennial.

Every 100 years, the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game that only the rulers of six realms are invited to play. The invitation is a summons—a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. The Centennial offers the six rulers one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. Each ruler has something to hide. Each realm’s curse is uniquely wicked. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die.

Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling—a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial.

To survive, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray…even as love complicates everything.

Short and Sweet Review

There’s six different realms and every 100 years they are invited to Lightlark to participate in the Centennial a deadly game. The ruler who wins the game will end the curse that plagues their respective realm. Lightlark follows Isla our main character who is a wildling. Isla doesn’t have any powers like the other rulers so she has to be strategic to win.

I think the situation concerning the curses was interesting I don’t remember if there was a reason each realm was cursed but on Isla’s the Wildlings are not allowed to fall in love. Isla goes to the Centennial and she only knows one person Celeste from the Starling realm and they’ve decided to align themselves and work together without anyone else’s knowledge. Isla knows the other rulers by name and just hearing about them. So the Centennial is 100 days and no one is allowed to attack another ruler until 50 days has gone by. Each ruler comes up with a game or demonstration to know more about the other rulers and eventually the rulers will be paired up and try to win the game by solving a riddle.

This was a quick read for me. There was a lot of alliances and betrayal going on and it was interesting to see who everyone wanted to work with and who they didn’t. I liked seeing Isla explore the different places on light lark to try to find something to break the curse. There was more running around the island trying to find this thing called the heart and not that much action. I thought there would be more action especially after the 50 days ended, but I will say some of the backstabbing did surprise me. The ending was good I guess the only thing that stopped me from rating this book higher was that there wasn’t anything that spectacular about it.