The First Girl Child by Amy Harmon

A Viking romance that will keep the pages flying. You may have noticed I'm a fan of Charlie Holmberg. Well, she is a fan of Amy Harmon. So I sucked it up--plus a free Kindle Unlimited trial--and picked up one of her latest series. I get the hype. This was an excellent read. While I am not a romance reader, I don't mind a general inclusion of romance scenes if they fit the purpose and are not gratuitous. The romance is why the story happens but not what makes the story exist.

We start with a young brother and sister discovering they have rune blood. This turns out to be a very bad thing for Saylok when the young girl becomes a woman scorned and curses the entire land. While she has a perfectly legitimate reason to be upset, it is probably a tad overzealous to curse an entire nation into oblivion. 

No daughters are being born, until one man miraculously has a daughter. So of course they make him king. Yet no more daughters are born after that. More than a decade and only one daughter! Tension is a mild understatement. The politics are rife in this first novel, and the action is non-stop. I found the pacing perfect and could not help but keep this book in my hand for hours.

The characters are endearing. You root for the good guys and despise the bad guys. Sometimes you even wonder which side a character is on. Motivations are completely selfish by all, but it makes for such an authentic and captivating read.


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