This Monster of Mine: a story of Rage, Redemption, and Justice.

Rage is her weapon. Justice is her mission. The truth is her curse.

She knows the taste of death. He’ll stoke her hunger for it.

Eighteen-year-old Sarai doesn’t know why someone tried to kill her four years ago, but she does know that her case was closed without justice. Hellbent on vengeance, she returns to the scene of the crime as a Petitor, a prosecutor who can magically detect lies, and is assigned to work with Tetrarch Kadra. Ice-cold and perennially sadistic, Kadra is the most vicious of the four judges who rule the land – and the prime suspect in a string of deaths identical to Sarai’s attempted murder.

Certain of his guilt, Sarai begins a double life: solving cases with Kadra by day and plotting his ruin by night. But Kadra is charming and there’s something alluring about the wrath he wields against the city’s corruption. So when the evidence she finds embroils her in a deadly political battle, Sarai must also fight against her attraction to Kadra – because despite his growing hold on her heart, his voice matches the only memory she has of her assailant…

A dazzling Ancient Rome-inspired romantasy debut, This Monster of Mine is a bloodbath of manipulation, deception, and forbidden love.

Review

4,5  stars

This was an excellent first work and a total surprise!

I am in a rush to write that reviews so I will give you the key elements that made this book a great read for me.

1)The main character

Sarai is literally a broken heroine. She was an underground street rat who taught herself to heal people while listening outside the classroom to what the teacher explained. Dirt poor and orphaned, she wanted to make the world a better place. She wanted to give more than she took.

Yet at fourteen her dream of becoming a healer will be crushed with her. She fell from a tower in the capital city and should have died. Miraculously she survived but she lost her memory and with mangled hands, her ability to heal.

Now, four years later, she is filled with female rage and seeks truth and revenge.

I do love a good underdog character, especially if it’s one filled with rage yet wanting to heal and help people, to fight injustice. That is Sarai in a nutshell.

2) The Mystery

What happened four years ago? Who were the bad guys?

These thought and that quest kept me engaged for the whole book. Even if I had some suspicion I didn’t know exactly who nor why and I love a good mystery in my stories.

3)The morally grey character

We don’t know with certainty if Kadra, the Tetrarch Sarai will end up working with is a true villain or a morally grey character for a long time. Yet he was dark, gifted, intense, brutal and sexy.

The author in her note compared him to Ben Barnes playing the Darkling and the endpaper art in the Fairyloot edition I own bore an uncanny resemblance to Ben Barnes!

I do love an intense anti hero capable of shedding blood, being extremely violent but never towards the weak and helpless.

All along you have violence, danger, threats and that will keep you going, wanting, no, NEEDING, to know what happened to Sarai and wondering if she would get justice. It was easy to read, engaging, with well fleshed characters, an interesting plot and setting. Well done!

Thanks for reading.

Sophie