ARC Review: The Ever King by L. J. Andrews

Wow!  I said this in an Instagram post as soon as I finished reading this, but Erik is a sneaky bastard.  Valen is my favorite hero of the Broken Kingdom.  I didn’t think anyone could touch that.  But if we’re given a spin-off series featuring my favorite hero’s daughter, I guess I should have been prepared for the Ever King to shove the Night Folk King to the side.

Erik walks the morally gray line with ease, much like Valen did.  It was for the good of his kingdom and his crown that he became the ruthless king the Ever expects.  With a blight creeping across the Ever, he’s trying to save his people while finding a way to get back the token of his father’s power.  A token that leads him back to Livia Ferus.

Livia, heir to the Night Folk throne, has always felt a pull to another place.  It’s not until she takes a dip in the ocean that she seals her fate and puts her on a collision course with the very grown-up version of a boy she befriended.  Once Livia and Erik fill the same space, she doesn’t know what to trust of her feelings or of Erik.

A lot happens in this book, but we spend most of it in the Ever learning of it’s people, it’s problems and it’s King.  Like Livia, the more we get to know Erik, the harder it is not to love him.  He’s the product of his rather horrible upbringing and was conditioned to act a certain way.  But we learn the very heart of this man is so much more.  Livia and Erik together learn how to embrace both the light and dark within them, and learning how that might save them, the Ever and maybe garner peace with the land Fae (if only others agree…sighs).  And as this book closed out, the crew of the Ever discover there is a traitor amongst them.  Now the question becomes, how will Erik handle this and what happens when they have to face the land fae.

Valen vs. Erik.  BRING IT!