BOOK REVIEW: LORD OF DARKNESS BY ELIZABETH HOYT

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

That was…certainly a historical romance book. I wanted to like this much more than I did, but there were problems with it.

The main character, Megs, is married to Godric St. John, a man who has a huge secret. (He galivants around the night as a vigilante, protecting the poorer parts of the city.) Their marriage was one of convenience (and born of blackmail), as Megs was pregnant by another man, who died. She lost the baby, and has been living separate from her husband for years. She decides she absolutely must have a baby, and thus, hurries to her husband’s side to seduce him. Godric is quite adamant at the beginning of the book that he will remain impartial to his wife, and that he has no feelings for her. He loves his previous wife, who died of what I assume was cancer. She died over 9 long years, and was in pain the entire time.

This book is really quite sad at the heart of it. There is a lot of death, and a lot of mourning and grief as the characters deal with losing their loved ones.

My biggest problem with Lord of Darkness is that seemingly around half-way through the book, Godric’s feelings for Megs just take a huge FLIP and suddenly he’s in love with her. I did not catch what started this flip, if there was anything at all. It was like…over the course of a page suddenly he couldn’t keep his hands off of her. I’m fine with that if there’s a narrative reason for it! It just didn’t seem like there was.

I picked this book up because someone described it as Hades/Persephone inspired, and I really only saw that at the very, very end, in one particular scene. I was disappointed that there were not more references to one of my very favorite myths.

Ultimately, Lord of Darkness was a resounding meh for me.