Hannah Nicole Maehrer

I finally picked this book up due to quite a lot of recommendations, I will say this book's targeted audience of adults is quite misleading. This book read more for an audience of ages of 12 to maybe 14, although I did overall enjoy and found myself chuckling at quite a few parts I felt that it still fell a bit short on plot wise.
The whole while this Villain is supposed to be some big bad he is depicted more as a brooding kind of emotionless man, who was deprived of love and therefore was not really sure how to express his feelings this does not equal Villain to me at all, with that being said it was also contradicting of his supposed nature because he seemed to care more than what he should, like deep down he was just a big softy. In hindsight he reminded me a lot of the Beast of Beauty and the beast but at the same time the Beast had more meanness to him than this villain.
The story also read more like a kid's fairy tale than anything and it really felt like something was missing. Now all with all that said and done I did find myself entertained reading this, I did overall enjoy Trystan and Evie and the slow romance building between the two. Once I stopped expecting this book to be for a mature audience I got into it and liked it.
Towards the end we find out some things that I will not spoil that but it really took me by surprise and had me mad as hell, but a good mad that made me give this book a 4 star, honestly i would give it a 3.5 but good reads doesn't allow that anymore so I gave it a 4 to round off :) .

So all in all the book is a cute story, with some humor in it and a messed up twist and I'd recommend to friends.… (more)

Representation: N/A
Trigger warnings: War themes, blood depiction, physical assault and injury, sword violence, death and murder of people in the past
Score: Six out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

Well that was a unique reading experience. I wanted to read Assistant to the Villain for a while to try romantasy again after other books like Fourth Wing and Iron Flame disappointed me. No library had it so I had to request one to get it for me. I glanced at the blurb, but I wasn't that intrigued, and when I closed the final page, it was okay.

It starts with Evie Sage looking for a job until she finds an opportunity to work for The Villain, which happens in the opening pages. The concept, the theme and message of unexpected romances were okay but there were flaws in the execution that forced me to lower the rating to three stars. The worldbuilding was lacklustre since the narrative focused more on the romance than the world itself, and the characters are hard to connect or relate with. The plot is average and didn't engage me enough due to the filler pages hampering the pacing. Removing those could've increased my engagement, as well as writing the characters with more depth and expanding on the world. Conflicts arise as Evie quits her job (what for?) and the kingdom of Rennedawn starts an uprising against the Villain (he's a false antagonist, mind you) but there are more filler pages afterward, until the conclusion, which has more action and a cliffhanger.… (more)