Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole MaehrerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Evie Sage is assistant to The Villain, aka Trystan Maverine. She's all sunshine and tweeting birds like Snow White or Pollyanna while he's all disembowelled enemies and getting interns to fight to the death on a slow Monday morning.
The book starts with King Benedict having captured The Villain, somehow magically supressing Trystan's death magic, and being very evil (think the prince in The Princess Bride). Can Trystan's Malevolent Guard plan a daring rescue?
To recap on the characters, there's Evie and her little sister Lyssa, their father sold them out to the King and pretended to be sick for years so that Evie would work to support the family. Trystan has a fearsome HR manager Becky, a frog with a crown called Kingsley (who is really an enchanted man), an ogre who makes cakes and sweets, a beast master called Blade who looks after two magical creatures called guvres and a dragon called Fluffy.
Basically, smash together the creatures and magic from Harry Potter, a little bit of folklore of Stardust, the aforementioned The Princess Bride and maybe a bit of Shrek, and a soupcon of Lothaire.
Evie's in love with her evil overlord, Trystan's in love with his sweet innocent assistant. They need to foil Benedict's evil plans, find Evie's mother, save magic, etc, etc, etc.
I did really enjoy this ... but in an effort to be clever and twisty there seemed to be a lot of people not really being dead, pretty much everyone is in disguise, and sometimes there needs to be a lot more progression between scenes rather than just abruptly launching into the next adventure, because it feels disjointed.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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