WITCHES STEEPED IN GOLD By Ciannon Smart
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.
Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon SmartSeries: Witches Steeped in Gold #1
Published by HarperTeen on 4/20/21
Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Paranormal, Young Adult
Pages: 549
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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Divided by their order. United by their vengeance.
Iraya has spent her life in a cell, but every day brings her closer to freedom—and vengeance.
Jazmyne is the Queen’s daughter, but unlike her sister before her, she has no intention of dying to strengthen her mother’s power.
Sworn enemies, these two witches enter a precarious alliance to take down a mutual threat. But power is intoxicating, revenge is a bloody pursuit, and nothing is certain—except the lengths they will go to win this game.
Jazmyne is the Queen’s daughter and she’s tired of the way her mother runs things, which is why she has aligned herself with a group willing to kill her mother so that Jazmyne can take the throne. Iraya has been living in a cell and spends her days thinking about how she’s going to exact revenge on the Queen who killed her family to ascend the throne.
We get both of the girl’s POVs and I personally thought Iraya was a stronger character. Even though both girls wanted the Queen out of the picture Iraya was willing to do anything while we see that Jazmyne would sometimes hesitate. I will say that Jazmyne would be the more logical one while Iraya was rash in her decision making.
The world building felt incomplete and sometimes didn’t make sense to me. I will say the pacing of the book was slow. It was hard to get through this book because I felt that there wasn’t a lot happening and sometimes the POVs sounded alike and it just wasn’t working for me. The synopsis mentions that the two main characters team up but they butt heads on everything and don’t really talk about working together until halfway through the book. I also didn’t feel like there were a lot of witch elements in the book.
Overall I’m not sure if I would pick up the second book. I was looking forward to reading Witches Steeped in Gold and unfortunately it was a let down.