A Temporary Marriage (The Fake Love Series #1) by Summer Dowell – (☆☆☆☆).

Violence: pit fights, physical, swords, thieving, poison, guns.Romance: kisses multiple discussions of sleeping partners and nights together one little detailed fade to black scene.Yet, all of a sudden Alessandra’s storming the palace to save the King and I’m like oh it’s them, OH WAIT, IT’S THEM! Beautiful blindside. I gathered most of the intel as the story went on. What I can’t believe is how I didn’t figure out the final twist. Girl power goes a long way for me in a book, so this was a nice touch. They would make me smile and I appreciated the way they approached difficult subjects and accepted and loved each other for their differences. If the book would have been longer and given more depth to all of these characters and stories I think it would have only made it better. Things kept getting wrapped up in neat bows without some angsty drag out. A lot of the sub-plot lines weren’t as long as I thought they would be.

While to me, it didn’t phase me much (I still gave it 5 stars), I can see the dilemma. Yes, it’s only 336 pages and that is it’s only downfall. There were plenty of quiet moments, swoon moments, ooo la la moments that all mashed together to give me a quick darker romance that I adored. I really felt the chemistry between them and thought the development was good for the length of the book. I got so excited every time Kallias and Alessandra had some page time together because the sparks were flying. A bit distant, strong, amiable, and honestly just trying to do right by his kingdom. He is the sultry YA hero that we all love. Alessandra learned how to have a friendship, a relationship, and how to take down some bad guys trying to ruin all the fun. She somehow stuck to her ideals, but became more open and trusting at the same time. While at first I wasn’t so sure about her, I loved her character by the end. Our unlikable heroine Alessandra really got down with her bad side. While her previous books were more one plot line with a sub-plot romance, The Shadows Between Us is alllll romance. I loved this character driven writing with broken and flawed humans.

I am smitten by Levenseller’s writing and I will continue to read every book she publishes because DANG.

The shadows between us series order