But that’s the thing about hearts, isn’t it? They can’t help beating despite the pain.”
Hello friends! Welcome to another book review, thank you for taking the time to visit my blog, it truly means a lot. 🫂 Today’s book is yet another one from Rina Kent, finally, I have decided to start the Rinaverse in order I am supposed to read, there is this huge list on her website, if you want to check it out, click here! I am already knee-deep in the Legacy of Gods series, however, I will keep reading the rest of her books in this order, I like that all of the series are connected to each other although these connections are incredibly subtle. Without further explanations, let’s start the first book of a trilogy of Creighton’s parents; I present you, the Royal Elite series book one: Deviant King.
As I have mentioned above this book’s main characters are Aiden King and Elsa Steel, two names that are familiar to me because I have read their son’s story before. I have already mentioned this in the book review of God of Pain, but so far from the three books I have read from the other series, Creighton King is one of my favourite characters and I wasn’t so shocked when I liked his father equally. Of course, it is not as thrilling as it could be since I know that the main characters of this series will end up together, however, Deviant King was an equally great book. I will not lie I didn’t like it as much as I like the Legacy of Gods series however, I thought to myself that this was a mediocre start of a good series. It is a bully romance, and just like their children, these characters are completely insane. Like I mean this. They are insane and I shouldn’t be confused about this because I do believe that it is genetic at this point. The book follows Aiden King and Elsa Steel. I first want to talk about Elsa because so far, she is my least favourite character out of every single book I have read from this author. I feel like she is incredibly confused and doesn’t know what she wants, not only that but I also believe that she is in this incredible denial that makes everything harder for her. She doesn’t have an easy life; she is very young, and she has a huge memory loss of her past, she has lost her parents and was raised by her aunt and uncle. She has a very mysterious heart condition which triggers everyone in the book, and of course, this makes sense in the second book however for the first book the author doesn’t really give you any details regarding her heart condition other than that if she stresses out so much or does activities that will trigger her heart condition it will be most likely deadly to her.
Our male main character Aiden is the golden boy of the Royal Elite College. He does sports, he aces every single class that he takes, and he has a very angry personality. From the first few pages, he makes it very clear that he is going to ruin Elsa’s life, and although there is a time jump in between a few chapters we can assume that he truly made her life a living hell for the upcoming two years and then the book comes to the current time. They are incredibly drawn to each other and I feel like their hatred towards each other is very genuine up until the end of the first book. I knew that he had something secretive behind his hatred towards our girl and in the last few pages couple of things unravel, however throughout the book this hatred turns into something rather scary and sometimes toxic, and it is something unusual for me, since these characters are very young I am not very used to reading these kind of spicy romances when it comes to young adults. However I must mention again like father like son, Rina Kent’s characters are from different human species I believe.
I liked that the steamy part of the book and the slow romance aspect didn’t overpower the plot itself too much, and although this was a mediocre start it made me start the second book immediately after; this is not something that happens to me very often. I remember not starting the next book of a series even though I thought it was ground-shaking for me several times, however the way the author wrapped up everything at the end of the book I felt this urge to immediately start the next book so that I could see what was going to happen. It wasn’t because of the romance plot itself but it was the general plot of the book. When you put your brain aside and just read a dark romance everything becomes less irritating and you tend to forget your ethical thoughts regarding these characters.
By no means that this wasn’t a dark romance because it definitely was, however, I see on Goodreads that some people just consider this as a young adult romance book, something I highly disagree with. Nevertheless, I am happy that I started reading the series because I know that I am going to enjoy the rest of the series very much. I want to see what will happen in the general plot and the real situation between them; what they have done in the past to the point where I feel like both of them are just pawns in a bigger game. As often described in the book, either a pawn or the King and the Queen.
I will see you in my next post, until then, stay safe! 💕
Luster of Books 