The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski

Following your heart can be a crime

A royal wedding means one celebration after another: balls, fireworks, and revelry until dawn. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement: that she agreed to marry the crown prince in exchange for Arin's freedom. But can Kestrel trust Arin? Can she even trust herself?

Kestrel is becoming very good at deception. she's working as a spy in the court. If caught, she'll be exposed as a traitor to her country. Yet she can't help searching for a way to change her ruthless world...and she is close to uncovering a shocking secret.

This dazzling follow-up to The Winner's Curse reveals the high price of dangerous lies and untrustworthy alliances. The truth will come out, and when it does, Kestrel and Arin will learn just how much their crimes will cost them. @goodreads 

MY REVIEW:

3 STARS 

Well, damn.



I didn't like this book as much as I hoped. Never fear, I still liked it but . . . . .



So Arin FINALLY shows up at about 70? pages in and it wasn't the reunion I was hoping for. I know that Kestrel is trying to make sure nothing happens to Arin because if she tells him she's doing it all for him then he will go off and be a twat and ruin everything. But, it's still no fun.

And I was getting sick of hearing about this Risha girl, who gives a rats arse about her! Get over it!

Kestrel made the deal with the emperor to marry his son, Verex in order to save the Herranians. She did that at the end of the first book. Now here she is living with them and trying to keep the wedding put off. Verex is a nice guy and isn't too enthused about the wedding either. Not that they don't like each other as people, they just know that the emperor twat is using them both.

I did read a spoiler for the third book about the emperor that made me happy :-D I will be glad to read about that.

Anyhoo, then we have Jess visiting Kestrel but she gets her panties in a wad when she finds out Arin was there and she knew Kestrel was still in love with him. Crap, I forgot to write down the page for the excerpt I was going to use! The whole thing is that Arin and his people poisoned and killed a lot of the Valorians but Arin gave Kestrel something to give Jess to help her live. But Jess was going on and on about how could you love him or blah blah. He took our homes and killed our people. Kestrel was like, they weren't our homes. See the Valorians attacked the Herranians first because they were jealous and wanted every thing they had. I mean they were trading with each other and had a good thing going I thought, but you know, greed and stuff. So how could Jess sit there and blame any of these people when SHE and all of the other people were living in the homes they had stolen and murdered families. Okay, not Jess exactly but still. They made them into slaves. I think Arin was a slave for like 10 years. My arse Jess, I don't like you any more for your stupidity.

Moving on.

Kestrel was playing some tricky games with people trying to work out something to make sure everyone was happy. But................................................................................. does anything ever really work. I want to smack everyone.

Someone better get their act together in the last book before I climb in the book with a flame thrower and set everyone straight!

I probably left something out but my brain can't think. Oh and Kestrel's father - wth? And the baby tiger =) Fin!

GOODREADS REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1610080145