Book Review: Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
A booktok favorite, this novel is filled with dragons, magic, and evilly cute romances. Check out my full review of Assistant to the Villain below!
Book Information
Evie is just trying to help her family survive. The only problem is, she just can’t keep a job. That is, until she meets the most notorious villain in all the land. He is aptly named The Villain. Soon, Evie is one of The Villain’s best employees and definitely the best assistant he’s ever had. Together, they form many evil plans to take down the king. But there are many secrets between them that are yet to be revealed.
Review | Heidi Dischler
Literally everyone was talking about this book, so I felt like I needed to read it. If I’m being honest, I am very underwhelmed. Like, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad book, but there just wasn’t much depth to it. I’m going to talk about writing style, characters, plot, and how though about it overall below.
With the writing style, it was a third person narrative. The only problem with that is that it sometimes jumped from one character’s thoughts to another’s. That threw me off because I honestly like to stick with one or two characters and stay there. Other than that, I really liked the writing style.
I loved the characters (specifically Evie and The Villain, of course). Evie was charismatic and fun and such an entertaining character. The Villain was this morally gray character who reminded me a lot of Damon Salvatore. If you’ve read my reviews before, please don’t come at me for being obsessed with The Vampire Diaries 🙂. Evie is obviously the only woman he’s ever had feelings for and it starts to brighten his darkened heart. Always a fun setup for a romance novel. They were probably the shining light of the novel.
Plot-wise, this novel had a little bit going for it. I’m still waiting to get some questions answered in the next novel, but you get a little betrayal in this one and not a lot of plot. Just romance angst, sooo in the end you’re just reading the ups and downs of their relationship with a few sporadic plot points in between. I wish it would have been more focused on outside things rather than the romance and I think that would’ve made this book much better. But, sadly, the romance wasn’t enough to always keep my attention.
Overall, the characters make this book good, but they can’t carry the lack of plot and the long so great POVs. I’d give this a solid 3 out of 5 stars. Here’s hoping the second book is better, but if you’re looking for something similar that I rated wayyyy better, check out Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros or, for a contemporary enemies to lovers novel, Book Lovers by Emily Henry.
Source: Audiobook from Libby Public Library
(P.S. You can read this book for free by signing up for a free trial of Audible, which gives you two free audiobooks of your choice!)
