Review: Queen of Coin and Whispers

Queen of Coin and Whispers 

Rating: 2.5/5

Buy or Borrow: Borrow 

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review 

When teenage queen Lia inherits her corrupt uncle’s bankrupt kingdom, she brings a new spymaster into the fold ... Xania, who takes the job to avenge her murdered father.

Faced with dangerous plots and hidden enemies, can Lia and Xania learn to rely on each another, as they discover that all is not fair in love and treason?

In a world where the throne means both power and duty, they must decide what to sacrifice for their country – and for each other … 

I really wanted to rate this higher because I was so here for the f/f romance and all the LGBTQ+ representation the book provides but while I did enjoy myself somewhat reading this, it ultimately fell a little flat for me. 

It does jump straight in with the plot and things move forward quickly, the book is fast paced which I appreciated and there was a huge amount of political intrigue and plotting and so on. There are really smooth and seamless transitions through time throughout and as for our main character Lia, she was very determined. She has a lot to contend with and there's a lot of political treachery that she has to find a way around and she wants to be better than her Uncle and make things better but as she discovers it's not too easy to do so. 

Our other POV is Xania, she's quite the badass and she becomes more and more adept at her job as Whispers over time throughout the book. She and Lia are quite ruthless, or at least they're supposed to be which was quite refreshing I just didn't particularly feel any true danger or high stakes throughout the book. I also appreciate side character Matthias. I loved his entire attitude and I spent a good chunk of the book really hoping he wasn't going to turn out to be shady. 

Unfortunately, I can't do a review anywhere near the length that I usually would as that's really all the positives I can say about this book. It was just...okay. I read this book in two sittings although it took me a little while to work up to reading the other half, I put the book down and I didn't feel that burning need to pick it back up and finish it I'm afraid. 

On the negative side of things, I feel like while the pace is fast and we move through time quickly, it's at the cost of developing the characters. I don't feel like they were fleshed out enough and that also affects the romance as well. I personally felt the romance to be quite sudden, I was looking forward to watching it develop and having some slow burn to squeal over but it was just suddenly there. I feel like some time could have been taken to fully develop the characters and the romance, and it was a little unconvincing how adept Xania became at being Whispers with no previous training doing such things. You do see her get more adept at it over the course of the book but the time skips do allow for it to be glossed over. There were just a lot of things about Xania that didn't really make much sense, she could just suddenly do this, or she'd learned this and so on. 

The world building was okay, it could have had more depth to it and I didn't really have a true image in my mind of the setting. I found it difficult to be bothered about the characters when they weren't that fleshed out so while there's plenty of blood and action and politics I was kind of breezing through the book without feeling too invested. The writing style was also a bit bland and there wasn't really that much of a difference between Lia's narrative and Xania's. The writing didn't draw me in at all and I felt like when it came to Xania the author was trying too hard to make her seem dangerous and edgy with her inner monologue and some of the imagery used. 

Overall, Queen of Coin and Whispers is a quick, fast read and it's an okay book. It's not truly bad, but it could have been improved a little, like it could quite easily have been a duology and more time could have been taken to develop the characters, the romance and the world. There were too many things about this that were a little hard to believe, and Xania wasn't entirely convincing a lot of the time. The romance lacked chemistry and development, and the characters weren't fleshed out enough for me to truly care about them and what happened to them. The setting could have been any generic fantasy setting with one little original twist and the writing didn't work to draw you into the story. I found myself making myself finish this once I'd put it down and I was overall very disappointed because I'd been so excited for the f/f romance that's in this!