Ashley Metzler

A war is raging between mortals and the fae for centuries. As part of a peace treaty Aisling, a princess of the north, shall marry the fae king Lir.
Since she is a small child he learned that mortals became before the fae, how bad fae are and what the mortals need to do to secure the security of their own kind. In the weeks before her wedding she is taught by her parents again how evil they are, how they lure mortals to kidnap them, torture them and eat them and that she shall not trust anything they claim to be the truth and never to show fear for the ugly creatures the fae are.
When he is into her new home, after her wedding, she learns that nothing is what she expected. The fae are not what she thought they are, also there is a threat they fear and she learns that nobody expected her to survive her wedding.
So bit by bit she discovers details, which were kept all her live from her, nothing is what it seems and slowly something stirs within her that is turning not only the world of mortals but also the fae world upside down.

We start with the mortal point of view how evil fae are, how right it is to fight them and that a young woman must sacrifice herself for the greater good of the mortals. She marries a fae king without being aware of their traditions, their language, without really knowing anything about the enemy. So together with Aisling we get to know all the characters as well as the world.  The world build is really great as well as the character development but at some points this is causing a slow pace. To shorten some things might have given the read a better pace.

The characters are really interesting as we see how prejudices are broken down when you get to know each other better, when you don´t blame crimes of one race on one person.
Aisling is a young woman who had so far a sheltered live as she was not even allowed to leave home. She believes all her father thought her so far, has a certain mind set. This happens often in the book and at some point it was a bit tedious for me. It is clear that she was brought up this way but slowly she learns that she was sold to a treaty and her father expected her to die. So should she not question other things he thought her especially when she learns in her new home that things are not as he told her to be? During the story she learns to stand up more for herself and that she wants to learn new things.
Lir is an interesting character as he wants to save the fae, stop the fires killing their forest and killing of his kind. So he is willing to accept a marriage and expects that his new bride will not survive the ceremony but when she does he is adjusting to it.
The love story between these two is really slow burn. I mean not really anything is happening between them at all beside they get to know each other more and more over the months as not even the marriage is consummated.
The other characters are really interesting as the fae dislike Aisling as mortal but during their time together, learning to know each other they get a different point of view and something like friendship, respect arises between them.

So a good idea, complex world build, good characters, good twist of the story at the end but in some parts of the story was the pace a bit too slow for me.
So I was here between 3 and 4 stars and would go with 3,5 which means I round up to 4 stars here.