Um.

WHAT THE HELL?!

Spoiler

Please tell me Sophie is actually okay and this was all some crazy misunderstanding! Please?

My God, this is good. Not perfect, but very, very good. I am thoroughly invested. When can I get my hands on book two?!

4.5, only docked because sometimes it was hard to differentiate between the voices of the sisters.
A crazy immersive, intrigue filled story about the manipulations and machinations of Daphne, Beatriz, and Sophorina as they head to foreign lands to marry.
I could not stop reading this book and desperately wanted to know what was going to happen and what was really true under all the lies and manipulations. The secondary characters added wonderful additional layers to the actions of the sisters, with rebels, spies, and backstabbing. This book is the perfect set up for a series and I can’t wait to see if it pays off in the next book(s).

My gut reaction after the first few chapters of this book was “oh this author was also definitely really into the ‘06 Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette movie, and probably also read the Antonia Fraser biography after too”. Largely speaking, if you know the broad strokes of Marie Antoinette’s story, you will be able to see it spread across the three monarchies that the sisters marry into, and, for the most part, be able to predict how things go for each sister, with a few small exceptions. Common things across all three include handovers, marriage consummation, and court intrigue. There’s also the pretty bog standard YA trope of “what your duty is said to be vs YOUR HEART”. There’s also just the barest hint of fantasy to the whole setting. Honestly, most of my rating for this is coming from the potential of the twist in the final chapter (which also can explain why the focus is overall on the political intrigue vs actually characterizing the sisters), and how it might play out over the rest of the trilogy. Picked this up from the library, and will probably do the same for the next book.

Castles In Their Bones by Laura Sebastian

Rating: 5/5

Summary: Three triplets have been raised from birth to marry their respective princes. Their mother, empress Margaraux, understands that everyone underestimates women. That is a mistake. Sophronia, Beatriz, and Daphne have been raised in the art of betrayal, loyalty only to their mother. They have trained their whole life to bring down monarchies so that their mother will come in and sweep them up. They're ready now to set out to fulfill this mission. Only the stars have their own plans, and empress Margaraux hasn't told her daughters all of hers.

Review: I fell in love with this book. With the twists and turns, the betrayals and the unexpected loyalties that were forged. I loved seeing how each main character was different from each other. They didn't read the same, they didn't feel the same and that is a hard feat to accomplish.

The characters were all amazing to meet. I fell in love with many of them, which made betrayals hit all the much harder. Sophronia was easily my favorite to read, it was easy to want to root for her. I wanted to see her prosper. Daphne was surprisingly my second favorite. I loved seeing her work to accomplish her mother's demands. To see her meet the characters she would come to work with. Beatriz was by no means my least favorite. I still absolutely loved Beatriz and I loved seeing her grow close to her prince and make some friends.

The side characters were all wonderful. I would have loved to see some of their povs, see into their thoughts. I didn't see any of the twists with the side characters coming and I loved it. I loved being caught off guard by them.

Enough of the characters, let's get into the plot. The plot was amazing. I loved reading all the political intrigue. The romance was a subplot which I enjoyed, it made sense for this book. There were so many plot twists and I didn't see any of them coming. Looking back through the book though the clues were there. That's how you know it was well done. While the plot started out pretty slow it definitely ended with a bang. The ending of this book left me in shock, I'm still trying to process it.

Definitely a book i recommend.

TWs: blood, death, fighting, poison, talk of sexual assault, parental abuse, mentions of sex.

Rep: gay side character

AMAZING!!!!!!! LOVED IT!!!!! Cannot wait for the next in the series. My only complaint is in the kindle version, some of the chapter titles did not line up with the character they were about. Not a big deal.

4/5

There was a LOT of info dumping in the beginning but after that the story does pick up quite a bit and was intriguing. Even I didn’t quite guess the twists. Much better than I anticipated going in and now I’m actually excited for the sequels.

I really enjoyed this!! But it was really confusing for the first 200ish pages

3.5 stars rounded up. I actually really enjoyed reading this one, and I love the whole court intrigue vibe. The names in this one are a bit… well let’s just call them whimsical haha.

Anyways, I did expect a bit more upper YA but it reads a bit younger. Once I adjusted my expectations I found it to be quite a fun read. I think fans of her first series and fans of things like The Selection etc. will enjoy this series! I’m looking forward to continuing the story and seeing where it goes.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for my eARC copy in exchange for my honest review.

What was that ending?! Why?! I need the next one now.