i might finish this? but girl i started this today and I'm about 100 pages in and all of a sudden there's insta love. I'm going to shoot everyone involved. it's not enemies to lovers if the moment he meets her he's like shiiii she murdered my mom but she kinda bad ( )

⭐️⭐️⭐️0.5 /5
🌶🌶/4

!! Contains Spoilers !!

This spicy Anastasia & Rasputin re-telling was a great debut novel from Molly.

I enjoyed the emotional journey of Anastasia as she grew into her strength, and I enjoyed watching Mikhail be the kind of man that is turned on by a woman owning her power instead of being intimidated by it. Their journey to overcome their own fears and baggage in order to accept the love they find in each other was powerful and resulted in some great spice.

Writing wise I enjoyed a lot of beautiful lines and definitely have my fair share of highlights throughout the book (see below), but there were also a few areas that seemed a little forced (tropes that didn't quite fit in with the surrounding story etc.) that I think just come from being within a debut novel. Some of these areas distracted from the full story for me and caused the 1/2 drop in a star. However I did overall enjoy the book and I'm excited to dig into more of Molly's work with her new Asphodel series to see how this promising storyteller evolves.

Fav quotes (whoops apparently there are a lot):

“While memories of revolutions heavily focus on the fire and ash, let us not forget the humble spark. It’s the incendiary device that rips fabric from the seams, pulls hearts from their chests, and babes prematurely from their mothers.”

“Every dance held midnight incantations where saints walked the halls of the Winter Palace like shadows, every song was a prayer played backward, and every jewel was cursed; when there was a masque, there was hardly ever not a hidden priest or khlyst devotee behind it.”

“Anastasia had come to fear her solitude for what she might find in it”

“There was a fire behind Anastasia’s eyes that had been dimmed, while not yet extinguished, and she has the face of a woman silenced.”

“Fear had a way of being deathly quiet and stoic, sending chills and stealing breaths, but panic was loud. It was fast heartbeats and sweating palms.”

(About Mikhail) “She had stayed calm and kept her cool for fifteen years, and in fifteen minutes, this strange man had ripped her limb from limb… and left her wanting more.”

“Only time would tell if they would be able to recognize each other’s matching scars or if the animosity of things out of their control would drive them apart”

Mikhail: “She’s a murderer with no control of her magic… but she’s stunning when she’s alight”

“They were each so blinded by their obsession to cover their scars that they couldn’t see their injuries were the same”

“It exhausted them; revealing their scars would have been so much simpler. The impenetrable wall they had both built around their hearts felt impossible to dismantle. It drove them both in constant predatory circles around each other. Both looked for weaknesses in the others defenses when they simply could’ve handed over a key.”

“Their delicate truce depended entirely on no one bringing up the past, an impossible fear when both of them were determined to be defined by it.”

“It was as though her layers were peeled away from her, revealing a woman who walked in total faith in herself with the support of the world at her back.”

M to A: “Your worth isn’t defined by what you can do for others. You are not a weapon or a tool. You want to help. So we will. We’ll help everyone. We can’t do it all today.”

“Anastasia. Who the fuck did that to you?”

“He was drawn to her power like a moth to a flame. Not to use it, harness it, or keep it, but to fan it. He wanted to stoke the fires of her magic and watch as everything burned down around them.”

“Is that the Tsarina’s coronation dress?” “It sends a message.” “That message is?” “Move aside.”

“I haven’t felt anything in years, the you broke into my life and shattered it all - in the best way, I lived an awful life.”

“Not bad… for a priest” “You can help me repent later”

“It was only when he had been able to accept that people were flawed, accidents happen, and to move past his own hurt… he had seen who she truly was. And God, she’s magnificent.”

“The only thing she ever needed to step into the full extent of her power was an unwavering sense of herself”

“Mikhail didn’t want to encourage her that they would do it together - even though they would, he’d follow her to hell - but he wanted her to believe in herself.”

“It didn’t matter that Mikhail wasn’t with her now. She knew who she was, and it was time for vengeance.”

“I am Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova and my father cannot keep me in chains”

A: “Never will you go after anyone I love ever again - including myself” ( )

This book was getting some buzz on certain sections of Bookstagram, but it didn't live up to the hype. You could tell that this is the author's first work; it really needed an editor. There were some holes in the plot and I got whiplash from the characters ever changing moods and motivations. The main characters were very flat and the secondary characters were basically stock characters. The romance tropes (enemies to lovers, one bed at the inn, instant attraction, to name a few) were plentiful and didn't really serve a purpose.

Stopped reading at 63%.