Review Detail

Long May She Reign has a lot of potential to be brilliant and puzzling. This is a tale about a girl who becomes Queen when just the day before, she was 23rd in line. So while she struggles with the responsibilities of being Queen, Freya also works on trying to find out who the murderer is and why they did what they did. Their intention could never have possibly been to put her on the throne, so who else could have done it? While Freya learns more about her people and her land, she also learns more about those she comes to call friends. She finds herself trusting them even though she knows she shouldn't, and that makes for a very interesting turn of events. All in all, Long May She Reign is about loyalty, fairness, and kindness when greed tries to overwhelm everyone.

Freya is a scientist, always experimenting in her makeshift lab to try and create things that could potentially help people as well as get her away from her home town. When she becomes Queen however, all that changes. It isn't acceptable for a Queen to be experimenting with poisons and metals and fire. Freya has to pretend science isn't her passion, until another attempt for the throne is made, and Freya decides to try one more experiment. She is a strong and brave Queen once she opens her eyes to the problems her advisers attend to. She is also honest. She makes a good Queen, though she does make mistakes.

The premise intrigued me from the beginning, and I wanted to read this book merely to find out they mystery: who killed all those people and why? We don't find out until the end, though there are some good hints along the way. The author is skilled in a way that when she writes, she can turn your doubt and suspicion onto someone completely innocent. The character that is actually the most suspicious ends up being one of our favorites, or a t least fairly likable. By the end of the book you will be thinking 'I knew it!', but then you will recall you doubt and accusations of other characters. This made reading more enjoyable for me, though there wasn't that much mystery to be honest. It was more so politics and romance.

Romance wise, there is not much. We see characters getting closer and creating a bond, and they get teased at times for liking each other, but again nothing really develops there until the end.

Overall, Long May She Reign tells a tale of a young girl's journey to royalty, and how she struggles not to become someone else.