Two Fae Princes, One Bad Decision Machine of a Heroine

A thief, a bargain, and a golden apple that ruins everything

Brie is a mortal con artist trying to buy her sister out of an indentured servitude situation, which is already more interesting than most of these books bother to be. To do it, she gets roped into stealing a magical golden apple from the fae, and to do THAT she has to sneak into the fae realm, which is split between two courts (Seelie golden-pretty, Unseelie dark-scary, you know the drill) that have been at each other’s throats forever.

And of course there are two princes.

Sebastian, sunshine, safe, the kind of love interest you’d bring home to a family that no longer exists. And Finn (Prince Finnian, technically), who is exactly the flavor of morally gray, low-key-manipulating-you-for-your-own-good that this genre has decided is catnip. It is catnip. I’m not above it. The whole engine of the book is Brie trying to complete her impossible heist while both of these men become complications she cannot afford, and the fun is watching her tell herself she has it under control when she visibly does not.

I’ll say this for the setup: the stakes are personal from page one. She’s not chosen-one saving the world, she’s a girl trying to save her sister and staying alive long enough to do it. That grounding is the best thing the book has going for it.

What actually works, and the thing that made me put it down and stare at the ceiling

Let me be fair before I get mean. The love triangle is the real deal. I mean that as a compliment. So many books slap “love triangle” on the cover and then make one guy so obviously the answer that there’s no tension, he’s just wearing a hat that says “correct.” Not here. For a good long stretch I genuinely did not know who I wanted her with, and more to the point I wasn’t sure she should end up with either of them, which is the sweet spot. Both princes want things from her. Both are lying by omission. That’s a triangle with actual voltage.

The atmosphere is competent-to-good. The fae bargains, the can’t-lie-but-can-absolutely-deceive-you logic, the courts, the sense that every kindness has a price tag hidden in the fine print: it’s all executed cleanly. Nothing here reinvents the fae wheel (this book has ACOTAR and The Cruel Prince in its bloodstream and does not apologize, and honestly why should it, that’s the whole market), but it turns the wheel smoothly.

Now the part where I stare at the ceiling. Brie. Look, I wanted to root for her, and for maybe sixty percent of the book I did. But she is a con artist who is supposedly good at reading people, and she keeps trusting exactly the people a good con artist would clock in four seconds. The book asks me to believe she’s clever and then hands her the naivety of someone who has never once been lied to. You cannot have a heroine whose entire deal is “streetwise survivor” and then have her repeatedly gulled by obvious moves. It’s the thing a lot of readers bounced off, and they’re not wrong to.

Here is where I question my own taste, because I’m bringing this up: some of the reveals are visible from a mile out. I saw a couple of the big “twists” coming so far ahead that I started to wonder if I only felt smart because the book was being generous with me. Maybe I’ve read too many of these. Maybe the predictability that annoyed me is the exact comfort-food familiarity that makes someone else’s whole week. Both things can be true. I have made my peace with liking a book my more discerning self would roll its eyes at.

Tangent, bear with me: the spice level. If you’re coming in expecting the wall-to-wall heat of the darker romantasy shelf, calibrate down. There’s tension, there’s chemistry, there’s some heat, but this leans younger and lighter than its cover font promises. Not a criticism exactly, just a “know what you’re buying” so you don’t feel catfished. If you want the fully unhinged morally-gray-fae-prince experience with the burn all the way up, this is the on-ramp, not the destination.

And the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it earns its cliffhanger reputation. I finished the last page on that runway, still not moving, and immediately wanted the sequel, which is both a compliment and a small act of manipulation on the book’s part that I resent and respect equally.

The best trick this book pulls isn’t the heist. It’s making you complicit in a heroine’s bad judgment because you, too, would like to believe the pretty liar.

About Leyndecker

Leyndecker writes squarely for the reader who tore through the big fae-romance titles and hit that specific grief of “now what.” This is an author who understands the assignment: give me feuding courts, give me two men I can argue about with strangers online, give me a mortal girl in over her head, and do not waste my time with three hundred pages of table-setting. There’s craft in the pacing, real craft, even when the characterization wobbles. This is commercial fantasy romance that knows exactly why it exists and is unbothered about it. I find that more respectable than a lot of books that reach higher and land softer.

If this one got its hooks in you, try these next

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, the obvious one, the reason this whole shelf exists, and it goes darker and hotter as the series builds.
• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, if what you loved was the scheming-mortal-girl-versus-cruel-fae dynamic and you want it written with a colder, sharper knife.
• From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout, if you want the same propulsive readability with the heat dialed considerably up.

You can grab These Hollow Vows on Amazon here if you want to see whether the love triangle wrecks you the way it half-wrecked me.

For your book club

1. Brie is supposedly a skilled con artist. Did her repeated trusting of the wrong people feel like a character flaw the book was aware of, or a plot convenience it hoped you wouldn’t notice?
2. Sebastian or Finn: not who you think she should pick, but who each of them says about what she actually wants versus what she needs to survive?
3. The book leans lighter than its darker romantasy cousins. Does that make it more approachable, or does it undercut the danger the plot keeps insisting is real?
4. How much of your enjoyment came from the book itself versus from the ACOTAR-shaped hole it was filling? Be honest.
5. Fae can’t lie but can deceive. Where in the book did that rule actually create tension, and where was it just decoration?