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

And Break the Pretty Kings by Lena Jeong
Series: Sacred Bone #1
Published by HarperTeen on 6/20/23
Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Historical, Young Adult
Pages: 447
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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Mirae was meant to save her queendom, but the ceremony before her coronation ends in terror and death, unlocking a strange new power within her and foretelling the return of a monster even the gods fear. Amid the chaos, Mirae’s beloved older brother is taken—threatening the peninsula’s already tenuous truce.

Desperate to save her brother and defeat this ancient enemy before the queendom is beset by war, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost.

Short and Sweet Review

Mirae is a princess and everyone is looking to her to save the kingdom, but first she needs to pass a series of test before she makes it to her coronation, but unfortunately things go awry. Mirae finds herself with a new power and her brother has gone missing and its up to her and a group to go find him and bring him back home. Mirae is desperate to save her brother, stop an ancient enemy, and stop a war from breaking out.

And Break the Pretty Kings had an interesting concept that involved a setting of historical Korea, characters that had powers, and history and myths. I honestly don’t think everything worked as seamlessly as it could have. Mirae is very head strong and doesn’t listen to advice from those around her. I think the magic system in this book was interesting, Mirae is about to control elements around her and she ends up with a new power, the power to time travel. The time traveling confused me, only because I didn’t understand the jumping around and the things other characters were telling Mirae when she would end up in their time period and what their motives were. This book was very confusing to me and I think it lacked a clear concept, from the synopsis we can see what the intentions were but it fell short. The characters lacked a clear motivation for what they were doing and it was hard to relate to any of them. We’re also introduced to the antagonist of the book and their motives made everything even more confusing for me. I was interested in seeing Mirae use her time traveling powers and learning more about Korean myths. Some of the things that were introduced were fascinating.

All in all I was just confused for 80% of this book. The ending didn’t make anything better, things weren’t wrapped up or answered in a clear way, and I think that was because there’s going to be a sequel. I believe for me to truly understand what was going on in this book, I would have to reread it… and I don’t want to.