Established wine merchant Nore Gordon navigates Nettlepool’s high society with ease, selling her wares and plying marks with drinks to learn a thing or two. As a spy for the Lindan crown, Nore finds that her business is very useful in providing her benefactor with information. She is very successful on both accounts, and has worked herself to the bone to make up for her disastrous marriage that almost made her lose everything. But when Cas, her estranged husband, appears in Nettlepool, Nore’s life starts to unravel once again. Because Cas’s presence is not accidental, he’s been tasked to join Nore on a mission in the neighboring kingdom of Idistra. There is nothing but lies and bad blood between the husband and wife, but the task before them will require a level of trust that was irreparably destroyed.
The book starts strong and does a great job quickly establishing the reader in Nore’s complicated world, where we see the brilliant but exhausted woman who is balancing her business and spycraft. The early flashbacks here to Nore’s childhood are well integrated into the present day and perfectly add a layer to the story so we can understand our protagonist. And here is where my issues with the Traitor Bride begin. While I feel like I have a fantastic grasp on Nore and the tension points of her life and relationships, the actual plucking of these strings don’t happen and leaves a lot to be desired.
One of the strongest elements of the first book was Grey’s co-dependent dynamic with Keir, so I’m shocked to find Nore and Cas’s relationship so lacking in this story. There is absolutely no tension between these two, and the huge chunk of the book where they begin and carry out their mission is a slog because of it. Their relationship suffers because we spend too much time in Nore’s head hearing how much she doesn’t trust Cas, instead of seeing the distrust and fear happening on the page. Their mission is so boring because there are rarely scenarios where we have to see their tenuous trust put to the test. Way too much page space is dedicated to Nore’s internal worrying while panning to show Cas disappearing from rooms and being aloof. Where Bovalino dragged us into Grey and Keir’s situation in book one to make us hurt and yearn, she leaves all trial and error off the page between Nore and Cas, effectively cutting off our emotional connection to them.
There were things I liked about Traitor Bride. The world has expanded with the introduction of Nore Gordon, giving us a new country and magic system to factor into the story. Book one is entirely set on the Idistran continent with its own inherent magic system. Nore is from Lindan, where magic is instructional, meaning it can be learned like equations and performed by anyone. The expanded magic system and its influence within the Idistrian system is a little loosey goosey. It both complicated the story in good and bad ways, making Nore’s mission more interesting but also frustrating me that so little was known or made sense from an application standpoint. And while I do miss our characters from book one, the sequel creatively gave us a different perspective of the world thanks to Nore. Since our protagonist is an outsider to Idistra, we see a different view of the Idistrian countries and their complicated ties pulling at their one and only magic source on the Isle of Locke. Nore is not a proficient magic user, so the story operates from a totally different set of rules, relying on Nore’s savviness and cunning more so than any magical tricks.
The Hand and the Heart series will continue in book three, and I’m hoping Nore and Cas’s time in the spotlight is done for now. Their introduction to the story kept the world fresh and interesting, but we lost a lot of the heart that I felt in book one along the way.
Rating: The Thief and the Traitor Bride – 6.5/10
-Brandee
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. The thoughts on this story are my own.
