Title: Ruined
Author: Amy Tintera
Publisher/Year: Harpercollins 4/4/17
Length:   243 Pages
Series:  Ruined #1

Overview

Emelina Flores has nothing. Her home in Ruina has been ravaged by war; her parents were killed and her sister was kidnapped. Even though Em is only a useless Ruined—completely lacking any magic—she is determined to get revenge.

Her plan is simple: She will infiltrate the enemy’s kingdom, posing as the crown prince’s betrothed. She will lead an ambush. She will kill the king and everything he holds dear, including his son.

The closer Em gets to the prince, though, the more she questions her mission. Her rage-filled heart begins to soften. But with her life—and her family—on the line, love could be Em’s deadliest mistake.

My Thoughts

The summary doesn’t do the story justice, but luckily it was more than enough to get me sucked into this new series.  Em, she’s the heir to the throne in Ruina, the kingdom of the Ruins, a people who have some type of power to control just about anything.  And because of those powers, they are feared.  Em’s parent’s had been murdered, along with much of the royal family and she’s now out for vengence.  She’s created this plan with a bunch of others both in her kingdom and across the warriors of Olso to avenge her parent’s death, and to get power back some how.  Em also wants to find her sister Olivia who was captured when her family was killed.

So…the plan was developed for Em to kill Mary, an heir of another kingdom and take her place to wed Prince Cas, who’s family was behind the order to kill her family.  Mary’s role in all this is that in order to wed Cas, she was ordered to kill Em’s family, Her own parents were murdered, so it seems to be going around.

Once Em infiltrates the castle, we see her role expanding.  Feelings that she never knew were possible were developing for Cas, making it that much harder since the end goal was that she was going to kill him to so that she could save her sister and overthrow the ruling family.

Throughout this story we have an interesting mix of relationships forming and developing.  There’s Em and Damian, one of the men from her home who’s in love with her, yet she’s not sure that she can reciprocate. He’s the acknowledged ruler of Ruina since Olivia has disappeared, and Em’s lack of powers makes her not worthy. Damian’s captured, and then things go all pear shaped.

Then there’s Cas – someone that you want to hate, yet a man who’s showing that he’s got different opinions than that of his family, and you want to think that he can be on the side of good.  He and Em have a roller coaster of sorts and where we see things go makes you wonder if there’s too much against them.

Then there are the sub stories.  Galo and his friend, Olivia, Aren…Iria.  All in all,lots of great stuff to take us through out.  Ms Tintera does a fantastic job of creating this world where power is the ultimate goal, either in magical power or assumed authority, and there’s really no clear sense of who’s going to make it out of the story alive and who will be in control.

Cas’s mother and cousin seem to have their own objectives, while the warriors from Olso make things tough.  It’s definitely a battle to the death and too many die at the end of book 1 to really make us feel like there’s going to be much left afterwards.  The cliff that we’re left at towards the end though is one that makes me really excited to see what’s coming next.  So on that note – i hope that you guys give this one a chance and i can’t wait until book 2.  Enjoy!