Assistant to the Villain

By: Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Libby audiobook 14 hours

Read by: Em Eldridge

Published: 2023

Genre: Fantasy adventure romance

 

I found this book by looking for available audiobooks in Libby. Book #2 in this series was available, so I looked for book #1. I checked it out and listened. There were things that were intriguing and I was hooked before the book started driving me crazy. Sadly, I pushed through to the end of the book to find out what happened.

 

The reader didn't really do it for me. I sped it up to 1.25x, then 1.3x  because I couldn't stand listening to her. (A friend said she listens to books at 1.8x speed in Audible! I don't like listening to chipmunk-sounding voices, so 1.3 was fast enough.)

 

I liked the line ". . . tragedy did that to a family - isolated them." It seems like such a sad truth. Sometimes when tragedy visits a family or a person, we just don't know how to respond and so we say / do nothing.

 

The more the book went on, the more irritated I was by the overwrought language and emotions. It was a crummy romance novel with too many irritating plot points. "Just kiss and move on!" 

Evangeline (Evie) runs into the Villain (aka Trystan Maverine). Looking up the spelling of his name, I learned that this was a TikTok thing before becoming a book . . . ugh. Literature it is not.

Some of the fantasy elements of the story drew me in, but what good is magic if you can't really use it? Evie's dad's betrayal was the nail in the coffin for me . . . no way do I want to read book two to find out what happens.