Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf
on June 5, 2018
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 400
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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Zera is a Heartless – the immortal, unageing soldier of a witch. Bound to the witch Nightsinger ever since she saved her from the bandits who murdered her family, Zera longs for freedom from the woods they hide in. With her heart in a jar under Nightsinger’s control, she serves the witch unquestioningly.

Until Nightsinger asks Zera for a Prince’s heart in exchange for her own, with one addendum; if she’s discovered infiltrating the court, Nightsinger will destroy her heart rather than see her tortured by the witch-hating nobles.

Crown Prince Lucien d’Malvane hates the royal court as much as it loves him – every tutor too afraid to correct him and every girl jockeying for a place at his darkly handsome side. No one can challenge him – until the arrival of Lady Zera. She’s inelegant, smart-mouthed, carefree, and out for his blood. The Prince’s honor has him quickly aiming for her throat.

So begins a game of cat and mouse between a girl with nothing to lose and a boy who has it all.
Winner takes the loser’s heart.
Literally.

My Thoughts:

Bring Me Their Hearts had a lot of potential.  A story about a girl whose heart is in the possession of a witch and the only way to get it back is to trade it for the prince’s heart?  Sign me right up.  I had extremely high expectations for this one and I think it worked against it.  While I didn’t have any actual problems with Bring Me Their Hearts, I didn’t love it like I hoped.

Zera was, by far, the best and worst thing about Bring Me Their Hearts.  I loved her fierceness, her stubbornness, and her surprisingly kind heart (even though it wasn’t technically in her body).  Her drive to get her heart back was easy to understand.  What was harder to understand was the fact that she was willing to put someone else through the same pain and suffering.  To her knowledge, the prince was an innocent.  She didn’t let that affect her decision to go through with the plan though.  Even as she got to know the prince (and maybe fall a little in love with him), she didn’t let it change her mind.  I was a little surprised and disheartened by that.  I wanted to see a little more growth in that department.

The rest of the characters were pretty fabulous and even showed up Zera a little (although not in the snark department).  Lucien, Malachite, and Fione are really what made me keep reading.  Lucien is your typical prince; handsome, powerful, and a little untouchable.  However, he’s definitely got more to him than meets the eye and that’s the side of him that I loved.  Malachite and Fione were probably my favorites although I feel like I definitely did not get enough of them.  Malachite’s sass was by far one of the best things about the book.  I also couldn’t help but love the strong female friendship between Zera and Fione.  You don’t see that very often and it was done really well in Bring Me Their Hearts.

The plot was a little slow and the book was a little long for my tastes.  There was some seriously great world building but it did drag a bit.  It’s not that I felt any of the information was unnecessary, I just felt that the way it was delivered was a little dull.   It also seemed like a lot of the really important, surprising information got dumped on readers at the very end of the book.  It made for a really great, fast-paced ending but it also left things at a major cliffhanger and I’m already ready for book two.

Overall, Bring Me Their Hearts shows promise for this series and I have already added the sequel to my TBR.  The cliffhanger ending has me dying to know more and I do look forward to more from these characters.  I have a feeling Sara Wolf is going to ratchet things up a notch with book two and believe me, I’m ready for it.

What others are saying about Bring Me Their Hearts:

The Nocturnal Fey’s review: “Overall, if you’re looking for a good YA high fantasy, with a kick-ass and witty heroine, a cold brooding prince, a funny sidekick, and intricate world-building, this one is for you.”

The Nerd Daily’s review: “This book was incredibly fun to read, and this is mainly because of all the characters being quite snarky, which makes for great dialogue.”

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