The Hurricane Wars

The Hurricane Wars has a strong beginning for high fantasy lovers and I was extremely excited about it. After that, the romance takes over and the politics assume a less central aspect to the story. Was I disappointed the romance takes such a central role in the story? A bit yes. The premise of the book is intriguing and I hated that it felt more bland, at least against my expectations. Did I still enjoyed the book? Absolutely!

As Romantasies go, this is the best one I've read in a while.
The writing is beautiful, the word building incredible, the magic system and politics are interesting and the romance is a believable, (very) slow burn enemies to lovers.
You can understand why they are conflicted and falling in love, you can feel the tension and angst and you end up suffering with them.

Although I would have loved for this book to be more focused on the fantasy side, I really enjoyed reading it and I believe it is a wonderful beginning of a new series.

The Hurricane Wars will be published in October 12th and it should definitely be among Romantasy lovers most anticipated releases.

I would like to thank HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, HarperVoyager and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

- - - - review update October 3 - - - -

I've reviewed this book a few months ago, but since then, a lot more reviews came, and most mention the same issue. I want to add my piece as well.

When I read The Hurricane Wars, I didn't know it started as Star Wars fanfiction, and I want to emphasize that at no point I felt that I lacked context for what was happening, or that I was expected to have prior knowledge of the world and events.

I am indeed a StarWars fan and, to be honest, when I was reading I did think “Cool! This reminds me of StarWars because of the light and the ships”. However, in no moment I thought about Rey and Kylo (and I'm actually a Reylo shipper, though I never read any fanfic).

Nowadays every romantasy seems like fanfiction of S. J. Maas and JLA, we need only to read the titles to know what is coming: bad boy is not bad, the FMC turns out to be an overpowered Mary Sue, the MMCs are some variation of our favorite batboys, vampires and daddy Niktos, . This apparently bothers absolutely no one, unless we change the fanfic to Reylo and StarWars.

This is by no means a masterpiece, and it has a lot of said tropes, but it also feels original. If this is what we get with Reylo fanfic, please give me more of it.

Personally, I think this was a lot better than a certain well loved best seller.