Ali's Reviews > The Last Dragon King

✧ 270/ 100

There are just some books that I wish I skipped out on but couldn't stop reading because it was under 300 pages. This is one of those books.

The Last Dragon King is a YA fantasy romance set in a world where you can have dragon blood. You could be a pureblood and be able to shift into a vampire or in Arwen's case you could have a small amount of dragon blood but be mostly human. However, the Dragon King is in need of a new wife after his past wife couldn't handle the amount of power he had, and all of their children and herself died at birth. Now he is sending his guard all over the land to find a new wife with enough dragon blood to be able to sustain themselves and his heirs. Arwen shrugs this off because no one comes to her small village anyway and she's mostly human. That is until her mom freaks out and spills to her that she was born to a highborn woman, with pure blood. Arwen's birth mother explained that Arwen must never be found otherwise the king would kill her, but when Arwen is forced into the castle anyway her plan is to make him fall for her so he'll never want to kill her. But when real feelings get mixed in and her glamour hiding her real magic is fading, betrayal and love will soon mix.

I don't know what this book was but I did not have a good time. This is a YA book with such an adult premise that I was shocked to find out it was YA. It's also written extremely juvenile, which makes sense considering it is YA, but it was pretty bad. Everything was so convenient and not in a thought-out way, but in a way that seemed so lazy. There were so many times to create suspense and tension, but the author decided to just make the story so easy. So many of the same phrases were repeated. I'm not saying I could do it better, because if you read any of my reviews 99% of the time they start out the same, but I don't claim to be a writer. It's so basic in concept and it had many times to make this fun, slow-burn, and creative, but Leia Stone just made it like every other fantasy romance.

I wish this went differently but the writing was not my taste AT ALL so I won't be continuing the series. There are so many other complaints I have but they're spoilers, so I will just leave it at that.

(Read this digital advanced reader copy via Edelweiss. This title is set to release on December 26, 2023, from Bloom Books! Thank you)