These Vile Hearts
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A delightfully wicked, fizzy debut romantasy--an enemies to lovers tale about a desperate mortal woman and a cursed fae prince
Maddox Sinclair has run out of options. No job means no health insurance —a death sentence for a type one diabetic like herself. She flees to the forest to make a desperate deal with a dryad queen: kill the Redwood King and be cured of the illness that threatens her life.
In the redwood treetops, Prince Castor, is cursed-- anyone who loves him is doomed to die. Like Maddox, he has made an equally unwise pact with his brother, the Redwood King: get a mortal to fall in love with him by solstice and be free of his curse forever.
When Maddox mistakes Castor for the king, sparks fly and troubles ensue. Each must decide what is more important—survival and freedom, or the love they (kind of, almost) feel in their traitorous, vile hearts.
Darkly funny and brimming with magic, These Vile Hearts by Melody Robinette manages to be both wicked and warm, beguiling and moving—a richly woven story of survival and fate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Robinette enchants with her sweet, spicy, and bitingly funny debut romantasy, about a human woman who gets in over her head in the land of the fae. Maddox Sinclair has had a hard life. After her parents were murdered by dryads—fae creatures her family is uniquely able to perceive thanks to their gift of Sight—she grew up in foster care. Now, at 26, she has no job and no health insurance, which is dangerous given her Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Desperate, she heads into the enchanted woods that abut her childhood home seeking the Myrtle Queen, ruler of the dryad Myrtlewood Kingdom. The queen agrees to cure her, but in exchange Maddox must kill the king of the rival Redwood Kingdom. Meanwhile, brooding Redwood Prince Castor makes his own deal with the king: find a mortal to fall in love with him, and he will finally be rid of the curse that leaves all his lovers dead. When Maddox meets Castor and mistakes him for the king, he directs her to lodgings at Magesté, a brothel he frequents in the seedy Nightshade District. He hopes to use the royal misunderstanding to speed up a seduction, even as she plots his murder. With daggers in their hands but romance in their hearts, the captivating leads prove easy to root for. Swirling with magic, sex, and sin—and not shying away from the harsh realities of living with a disability in modern America—this is a stunning start.
