A new Booktok sensation has caught my eye, it has been hyped up so much that I couldn’t resist buying this duology by Liv Zander.

Even though I’ve read a couple of Dark Romances this one was something I’ve never read before. I have to say that I was intrigued and appalled at the same time which makes this book one that is not for the faint of heart.

Trigger warning; Gore, maggots feasting on flesh, festering wounds, people rotting from the inside out while alive. As I’ve said, not for the faint of heart.

Elara is a gravedigger by trade, helping her mother and younger brother with preparing corpses, transporting them and burying them. With the rot spreading through the kingdom the number of corpses they need to attend to is at an all time high. Their father has been infected and is suffering from the rot on his lungs which makes him incapable to work and her younger brother Daron has lost a finger to the rot and its still slowly spreading.

After attending to two corpses, the last being a mother of a young boy which makes the boy an orphan; Elara gives his payment back and tells him where to go so he’ll be taken care off. Outside of the house a man lingers in the shadows, he told her ‘The crown needs to be fed’ whatever that means. When that same man seeks her out in the graveyard and offers her a job as caretaker of the King and telling her about the curse of the crown and how he’ll help her family if she makes the king fall for her and sacrifices her live to the crown she hesitates, but with their father being bedridden and her brother’s health declining she takes the job anyway.

Arriving at the castle Elara is rather nervous of what to expect. One of the things the man named Vale said was ‘Don’t stare at him and whatever he says to you or whatever you see, don’t run’. Her first encounter is nothing short of a nightmare, the king looks like a living corpse; alive but rotting. Wounds dripping with pus, welts that burst open and maggots flying out of them. Elara has to fight to not vomit on the floor in front of the man, but when maggots come flying and one actually end up in her mouth, she flees.

Vale told her that the king wants the curse to end with him but the king can’t die, the crown won’t allow it; regenerating skin and healing wounds at slow speed. Forever suffering but never dying. The crown demands to be fed once every couple of years or else the rot will be spreading, taking over the kingdom. The king, Kael is a stubborn bastard and with him being the way he looks and always in a foul mood and sending Elara away, how can she make him fall for her? How can she wed and bed a man that looks like a monster?

Will Elara succeed in her quest to make the king fall for her? Will she find out how this curse came about and break it? Is Vale to be trusted?

I’m giving this book a solid ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ stars, loved it even though it really was gory in the beginning.