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The time has come to start Sophie Lark's Kingmakers series. This is her newest series and the fourth book came out earlier this week. To celebrate the end of her series, Sophie and her husband will be doing a live show on Jenn's (The Book Refuge) channel. There was a mention there will be spoilers, so I wanted to get them binged before then. The Heir (formerly The Freshman) is the first book in the series. I was able to apply this read to the Summer of Swoon board 2 prompt booksta recommendation.
If you haven't seen my previous reviews of Sophie's books or weren't aware of her, Kingmakers is a spin-off of her Brutal Birthright series and also connected to her Underworld series. Our hero is Leo, Sebastian and Yelena's only son (from Heavy Crown). Our heroine is Anna, the eldest daughter of Nessa and Miko (from Stolen Heir). They've grown up together and are best friends. Instead of going to a traditional college, they both are accepted to Kingmakers. It's a secretive and secluded school to train mafia children. There are four "houses," the heirs, accountants, enforcers and spies. Everyone has a little bit of overlap, but there are also house exclusive trainings. There is also a big event every year where each grade competes to win. Leo wants to not only be the freshman team captain, but also be the first freshman team win.
This book was a struggle for me. I had known going in that it was going to be a love triangle since Sophie Lark mentioned it in a previous live show she did on Jenn's channel. I do not have the patience for love triangles most of the time and just get so frustrated with a lot of the situations. While Anna never really quite fell for Dean, she was open and vulnerable with him. Where I really struggled though was partly with Dean and also the situations they were put in. I didn't like that Dean orchestrated Leo getting drugged and that it wasn't addressed until the end of the book. I also didn't like that there was any communication between Leo and Anna about their relationship changing until almost 70% of the way through. On top the misunderstanding and small time jump, it just was something I didn't enjoy. Then we kind of fast forward through time and don't see much of Anna and Leo being together outside of the competition or a couple sexy times. I did think it was sweet that they both ended up being virgins and were almost subconsciously saving themselves for each other.
I think the big crux for me was I wanted more romance between Leo and Anna. Actually, to see it instead of it being montaged until the end of the school year. I also had a lot of issues with Dean. He was so blind in his hatred towards Leo. It was kind of mentioned once, but I wish that Anna would've pushed Dean more about just even recognizing that there are two sides to the story. I do know that the third book in the series is Dean's book and he's intentionally set up to be the big bully moving forward. I don't know, it just felt like too much at times and made me question if he really was as smart and he was made out to be. While I understood his jealousy of Leo and how drastically their lives differed from the same starting point, but I didn't like his constant belief that Leo didn't deserve any of it. That's another thing to mention, this series has a third pov. This book was Dean. I don't think I mentioned it before, but Dean is Leo's cousin and the son of Yelena's twin brother Adrian.
Even though this book was really a 3.5-star read for me (that I rounded up to 4), I was still engaged and really enjoy this mafia universe Sophie has created. I'm certainly intrigued to read the next book and am wondering who the other couples will be outside of knowing Dean is the third book. I've heard spoiler free reviews of her last book that says she wrapped everything up really well, even for our side characters. I hope we get to see, even if it's in the background, Ares get his hea. I really liked him a lot and want him to be happy. I just connected so much with him, especially with his introverted nature. I'm also loving the Harry Potter and Hogwarts inspiration for the school. It's done so well!
Have you read The Heir?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: The Heir, Sophie Lark, 4-stars, eBook, 0 days, 509 pages, published in 2021.
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