Astrid Scholte

Keralie is the best pickpocket in all of the kingdoms of Quadara, but when she steals a "comm disk" and realizes a royal murder plot is afoot, she must learn who to trust and fast.

Four Dead Queens

Includes an excerpt from the author's novel The vanishing deep.

Georgina :)

Morgan Thomas

** spoiler alert **
           Sometimes there is a book that has a premise so interesting - building some sort of monarchy from scratch that maybe you think to highly of it. I think I expected the world building to be better, and as it wasn't that made the book fall flat. Why, in the hundreds of years that Quadara has existed would each quadrant exist in such a vacuum? And how could no one else want to unite them?

Gillian Rose

I think I liked this? It was pretty confusing but the overall story arc worked? It's weird.

Loéva 

Mitigé sur ma lecture. effectivement il y a des moments où je l'ai apprécié et d'autres où je passais mon temps à lever les yeux. La personnage principale mon a pas plus enchanté. Mais la trame n'était pas mauvaise ni même la fin qui était plutôt surprenante.

Rachel Kanyid

Definitely a fast paced story. I enjoyed it even through many cliches and barely getting to know many of the characters.

giorgia :)

LOVED THIS BOOK! ONE OF MY FAVES EVER!! (SPOILERS!!) WHEN I REALISED THE QUEENS HADNT EVEN DIED YET I WAS SO SHOCKED! THAT WAS VERY SMART! WHEN I REALISED THAT KERALIE WAS THE KILLER I HAD TO PUT DOWN THE BOOK FOR 5 MINUTES. WISH THERE WAS A SEQUAL ABOUT KERALIE AND VARIN.


ALSO I LOVE THE CASUAL LGBTQ+ REP

Cheri McElroy

I read this book expecting little because of other poor reviews. I was pleasantly surprised to like it so much. I am a plot driven reader and thought the pacing was good. I enjoyed the world and didn’t see the big plot twist coming. My only beef was the main romance, which was to “insta romance” for my taste. A great first book by the author. 4.5 stars.

Pamela Fitzhugh 

3.5 ⭐️ this book honestly took me a few tries to read it. I loved it though and regret not being able to get through it the first time. That does take some stars away though and it was just kind of boring. In the end I loved it and think the whole idea was great. Every character had twists and turns that I couldn’t believe happened. In the end it’s a happy story, but still the interesting parts we’re just boring to me. I can’t get over that. BUT if you love the betrayal, lies, deceit of royal courts, and romance then you’ll love this one.

Shereen Evans

I throughly enjoyed this book. Only reason I could give it 5 stars was because there were so many POVs at the start and a bit hard to keep track. It is a fast paced murder mystery and keeps you guessing as to what is going on. It wrapped up nicely and I was so happy for Keralie and Varin.

Sandra Tammaru

This book reminded me of Six of Crows a bit because of the overall vibes and even tho I didnt love this quite as much, it was a gripping read that kept me wondering tge whole way through. It offered a devious plot, twists throughout, interesting characters and relationships that were complex and realistic. I enjoyed it a lot

Livia

When I jumped into this book, I heard some mixed reviews. Some people that their reviews I trusted didn't like this book that much. So I was a bit hesitant to read it.

It wasn't blowing my mind or anything, but this is such a fun and quick read! I love the world-building and the idea behind four queens ruling different quadrants. I didn't particularly agree with some of the Queenly Law, because they're stupid and weird. (view spoiler)[ I mean, they couldn't get married because it would divert their attention but they still have to bear a child, which means they must get impregnated by someone that is not lawfully married to them. Which I do not stand for.  (hide spoiler)] 

The plot of the book is a bit confusing because we didn't know if we jump back in time or if we jump ahead of time, or if we didn't at all. Things did start to clear up at 80% of the book, but it was still pretty confusing.

I admit I didn't see the twist coming up until we were introduced to it. It was still pretty suspenseful, and I enjoyed it. I must say, I hate, and I mean, hate Mackiel and his girl with all my heart and soul. I love Keralie even though she annoyed me sometimes. Though her and Varin's insta-love is very predictable and very... insta-love, they were still kinda cute.

cora rolfes 

i like everything. look at my reviews. most of them are 4 or 5 stars. but this book has SO many issues. i don’t even wanna spend more than five minutes unpacking them on here. the dialogue was awful, the characters were introduced really weirdly, and Keralie is so inconsistent and infuriating? don’t read this melissa lmao

Allison Garrett

Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte is a standalone I’ve been hearing about for quite a while and the premise has always stood out to me. That one girl knows the plot of the assassinations of the four queens of her realm and must try to stop them before it’s too late. For me there were a lot of ups and downs to this book, and I found it relatively easy to put down which is never a great sign from me. 
	Pros: 
•	Plot- There were a lot of different aspects of the plot that I certainly enjoyed. The idea of the separate quadrants and solving of the murder plot was the reason I was intrigued in the first place. 
•	Twist- The plot twist at the end was honestly something I truly didn’t see coming and for that I have to give props to Scholte for the creative idea. 
Cons: 
•	Characters- All of the characters fell a little flat for me. I really only liked Varin and his main personality trait was that he had no personality. The main character, whose name I’ve already forgotten, tried to have some development but failed in my opinion. Everyone else was so one dimensional they were uninteresting. 
•	Love Story?- This part probably bothered me the most. This was advertised as a love story murder mystery, but the love part was basically nonexistent and so forced it should have been removed altogether. 

Overall, I’m giving this book 2/5 stars. It was interesting and a fine read, but I definitely won’t pick it up again.

Really enjoyed this book! There were lots of twists to keep you on your toes! Cool and sad that we got to have the queens povs cause as seen by the title they uh all die. But over all really interesting book/plot. 

Hannah Williams

Ashlei Cottom-Moran

This was actually a pretty good read! I thought it was going to be predictable but I still ended up being surprised at the end. Unreliable narrator, plot twists, murder, scheming and a small heist made this very fascinating! 3.75/5

Maegan Kennedy

I was iffy at first with starting this book because the synopsis did not sound like my thing. After reading the first few chapters I was hooked! I felt as though I was standing next to the main character on her journey. I was also surprised at the murder-mystery element within the fantasy world! Scholte created such a uniques and captivating world that I’ve never read before and was refreshing! The journey was fast paced, despite the flashbacks to the Queens’ perspectives. I was set on giving the book 4 stars until the twist came to light! Without spoilers, I was NOT expecting the twist at all! It was so refreshing and I loved the concept! Overall, this book was so amazing and I’m looking forward to rereading it already!

Jessica Guht

I loved this book! I was in a bit of a reading slump but this book ended it for me. I couldn't wait to see what happened and I can truly say that I did not expect that ending. So good!

really good book, unexpected plot twist and really good characters

HeyBiblio Fam Club

One of the best fantasy standalones I've read this year.

Alexis Aumagamanaia

I have decided to give this a 2.5-3 / 5 stars. I felt like the plot didn’t fully connect. It was very scrambled and all over the place, which was disappointing bc it promised to be a much more interesting read than it ended up being. The pacing was strange in the fact that it bounced between going way too fast and needing to gain momentum. Personally, I felt that the chapters were too short and lacked substance, as many could have been combined into one chapter to more effectively tell the story. At times, it felt more like reading the mid-edit rough draft than a fully complete and fleshed out story. I was never given enough information about any of the characters to develop a connection or a definitive opinion on them, although Keralie’s character was lovely and complex; they didn’t focus enough on corrupt power structures or give us enough information on WHY things needed to change and WHY [redacted] was an awful choice for Queen. There was too much WHO and WHAT, but never enough WHY. My overall feelings are just....meh.

Kate Gravelle

This book had all the elements I was looking for at the time! Keralie’s character was my favorite and I love how the author wrote the story start to finish in one book vs splitting it up over a series.

Vanessa M

Je trouve dommage que les parties sur les reines ne soient pas plus développées, clairement c'est des passages que j'ai beaucoup appréciés mais j'aurais aimé en apprendre davantage sur elles. 
Les parties sur Kéralie sont sympa, avec de l'action, mais j'ai trouvé certaines longueurs et quelques points prévisibles. 
La fin par contre, je ne l'avais pas vu venir ! Mais du coup je ne sais pas quoi en penser, ça me parait un peu précipité et trop "beau" (genre happy ending et tout, meh)

Lauren

This was fun! Very predictable and didn’t need the unnecessary romance but it was entertaining.

Four Dead Queens

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