I picked this up because I was specifically in the mood for enemies-to-lovers with an antihero.
And Osric Mordaunt certainly fit the requirement.
He is an assassin from the Fyren Order who becomes seriously ill and discovers that the person most capable of helping him is Aurienne Fairhrim, a healer from the rival Haelan Order. Aurienne has problems of her own. Her Order is trying to deal with an outbreak of a long-forgotten disease and desperately needs money, which is how she ends up reluctantly agreeing to work with a man she thoroughly dislikes.
So we have an assassin and a healer who belong to opposing Orders, forced to work together.
Obviously I was interested.
I liked both of the main characters, which is not always a given for me in a romance.
Aurienne is exactly the kind of heroine I enjoy. She is extremely capable and intelligent, but she isn’t constantly trying to prove that she is capable and intelligent. She simply is.
And Osric?
Well. Cold, broody, dangerous, morally questionable.
In this case I was actually looking for an antihero, so he was very much what I wanted.
But what really made the book work for me was the slow burn.
I don’t want enemies-to-lovers where they are supposedly enemies for five minutes and then immediately start falling over each other. Give me the resistance. Give me the denial. Give me two people who genuinely have reasons not to like each other and then make them spend enough time together that things begin to change despite themselves.
This book gave me that.
And I especially loved that Osric got there first.
There is something enormously satisfying about watching the cold, broody one slowly realise that he is in trouble. By the time he begins recognising what he actually feels for Aurienne, she still isn’t quite there yet.
Perfect.
It meant I got to enjoy him having to sit with those feelings instead of the romance becoming immediately mutual the moment one of them realised what was happening.
The rest of the story moved at a good pace too. The mystery surrounding Osric’s illness and the reappearance of the Pox gave them something substantial to do besides simply circle around one another, and I kept wanting to know what would happen next.
But really, I came for the enemies-to-lovers antihero romance.
And on that front, I got exactly what I wanted.
Rating: ★★★★★