On These Wicked Shores

Spoiler-Free Review:

Okay, The last few chapters of this book were wild! First, I'd like to thank Katherine Quinn for an ARC of this book! This book follows the events of book 1 in The Azantian Trilogy, The Girl Who Belonged to the Sea, which I read and reviewed last year. This book picks up where book 1 left off following Bash and Margrete. It is mostly dual POV, but we do get a little sprinkling of other POVs here and there and I enjoyed that. Right off the bat, I could tell that Bash and Margrete were going to have some communication issues. There were so many events in the book where if they'd just talked to each other, they would have resolved. However, would we have all the twists and turns and things to drive the plot if they were resolved? No we wouldn't. There is an element of mystery with Bash that kept me turning pages so I could solve it. Katherine Quinn definitely foreshadows that he has a mysterious past and that it eventually will come to a head. There is a trial sequence which was fun to read, and I felt the trials were unique. The ending was wild and unexpected and honestly, has me wishing book 3 was out now. There is some spice and it was well written. The plot has definitely thickened, and I can't wait to see where this story goes. Release for this book is set for May 31, so keep your eyes open on Katherine Quinn's page for more information on preorders. This is an adult fantasy, 18+ for sexual content.

Thank you LibraryThing and City Owl Press for the early access to this book for an honest review.

This book picks up just after the The girl Who belonged to the sea. Margret and Bash are back in Azantian, trying to adjust to their changes.
After discovering the sea monsters are attacking humans and leaving a lot of casualties behind, a crew of Azantians leave to fight them and the adventure begins.

What I enjoyed:
- fast paced story with different POV. In addition to Margret and Bash we now see some chapters through Bay's perspective.
- Bash character evolution. This was really interesting and I think it was well done. He is definitely my favorite part of the book.
- We finally have a good villain.
- The twists were well executed, albeit a bit predictable.
- There was a lot of action which kept me invested in the story

What I think it could have been done better:
- The trilogy title sounds very misleading. So far, the story has nothing to do with Azantia. I have the same doubts I had in the previous book as the author didn't add new information to the world building. This details are irrelevant as the story keeps evolving solely around the romance.
- The story does not work if you take the romance out I don't like romances where the characters lie or hide information from the other. It's just not how relationships are supposed to work.
- The sea monsters and human casualties are an irrelevant detail to this book.

The major problem with this book were my expectations.
I still think Katherine Quinn imagination would create a very interesting fantasy book. Unfortunately, the author didn't develop what I considered the most interesting parts of the story and focused only on the romance, which let me a bit disappointed.

However, I believe this book will be interesting for romance readers.