Author: SenLinYu
# of Pages: 1030 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive. According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit? To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.
Review: This was a very solid read IF you're reading it from the perspective that it originated a Harry Potter universe Draco x Hermione fanfic.
As a stand alone book, the character development is actually quite weak. I haven't read the original fanfic Manacled (although I'm tempted to read it just so I can compare), but presumably SenLinYu relied on the character/relationship building from the original Harry Potter series that is now missing in this new world she created.
The story also READS like a fanfic, and not just because of the romance (in fact, although the romance is a prominent part, there were less romantic/smut sections than I would expect from a fanfic). The characters were overly expressive and descriptions of their expressions were repetitive (e.g. characters often have their face contoured in rage, which read as an over dramatized and unrealistic).
But from the perspective of a fanfic, the story is quite good and insanely addictive. Since I care about Harry Potter characters like Hermione, Draco, Harry, Ron, etc, I was invested in their continued story through this book (it's pretty obvious to tell who is who even with their names/descriptions slight changed).
Despite being over 1k pages, I flew through this book (Part 3 I read in one sitting!). Part 1 was repetitive and slower to get through mostly because the world building isn't clearer until later in the book (so up to you if reading 200+ pages before really getting immersed in the world.
Solidly a 4 star read, but I would only recommend it if you're familiar with the Harry Potter characters.
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