The Gilded King - Josie Jaffrey

Book Summary

In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.

Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.

But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.

Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.

One way or another, the walls of the Blue are coming down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.

The Gilded King was a finalist in the Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award for 2020. It just missed out on the top 3, coming 4th in the competition.

I'm not sure this was exactly the right book for me to read at this time, with a virus quite heavily involved, but luckily I didn't realise before I started and despite it I still really enjoyed the story. The vampire concept was unique, quite different from anything else I've read. The writing was really good, keeping me captivated. However, I felt confused quite often and couldn't keep all the characters straight in my head, meaning I got a lot of them mixed up. I'm still not really sure what happened at the end, though it is the first of a trilogy so I'm sure a lot will be explained in the next book.

To go with The Gilded King, I made a Silver Martini. Shake the following with ice: 1 shot gin, 1 shot extra dry vermouth, 1/4 shot maraschino, couple dashes orange bitters. Strain into a martini glass.

I received this book to read and reviewed as part of the BBNYA 2020 competition organised by the @The_WriteReads tours team. All opinions are my own, unbiased and honest. BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors.

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