Lions in the Garden by Chelsea Luna Series: The Uprising #1
Publisher: Lyrical Press (2016 - March 1)
eARC (236 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2016 Royal Challenge, Read 2016
Synopsis
Prague, 1610
Ludmila Novakova--Mila--has barely set foot outside Prague Castle in her seventeen years. But with the choice between braving the bandits and wolves of Bohemia's uneasy roads or being married off to a disgusting old baron, she's taken what she can carry and fled.
Escape won't be easy. Even Mila has heard the rumors of a rebellion coming against the court. The peasants are hungry. The king hasn't been seen in months. Mila's father, the High Chancellor, is well known and well hated.
But Mila can't sit behind a stone wall and let fear force her into a life of silk gowns and certain misery. Her mother's death has taught her that much. She has one ally: Marc, the son of the blacksmith. A commoner, a Protestant--and perhaps a traitor, too. But the farther she gets from the castle, the more lies she uncovers, unraveling everything she thought she knew. And the harder it is to tell friend from enemy--and wrong from right . . .
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My Review
Ludmila Novakova (Mila) is a headstrong girl. She is the daughter of the Chancellor of Bohemia and was raised to be the perfect lady. However, Mila doesn’t want to marry as her father commands.
Mila has grown up with Radek, the Duke of Prucha. She credits him with saving her life after the death of her mother. Over the course of the years, Radek had fallen in love with Mila but Mila doesn’t feel that way about him.
All is not perfect in King Rudolf’s Bohemia. The Protestant peasants are planning a rebellion against the Catholic nobility. Mila finds herself being drawn into it after being rescued by Marc while trying to escape an arranged marriage. Then there is the small problem that arises when Mila is kidnapped by Protestant rebels the night of her engagement.
This book was fast paced with everything happening in the course of about two weeks. Mila has to make the decision on where her feeling lie and who she will be loyal to. Those aren’t the easiest decisions to make as secrets are revealed.
There were some issues I had with this book. The first things was the all-consuming insta-love between Mila and Marc. They meet when Marc saved Mila along the road and returns her to Prague. Already there is attraction. They meet a second time and suddenly Mila is feeling jealous. The third time they meet, Marc want to murder Mila’s other beau, Radek. I’ve complained about instal-love before and I was not a fan of that.
Then there was the whole making the Catholics out to be the bad guys. Sure, not everything was perfect in the 1500s. There was a lot of corruption in more than just the Catholic Church. But when you make every Catholic an evil, power-hungry, back-stabbing man, that is just wrong. The Catholic’s weren’t all bad and I hated seeing the Catholic Church portrayed this way. There wasn’t a single Catholic in the book I would deem good. That is pretty terrible. How can all of the Catholics be evil? Come on! That is so not okay with me. Not. Okay. At. All.
While I really enjoyed parts of this book, I can’t rate it as high as I want to. I can’t stand instal-love, so there went a star. Then the second half of the book read like Church-bashing which I really can’t stand. So even though I can’t rate this book as high, I did enjoy reading parts of it.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley for
review consideration. This in no way affects my opinion of the title
nor the content of this review.
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