A Pocket of Lies

De: R. A. Sandpiper

Narrado por: Helen Keeley

Bloodbound and penniless. Exiled to cursed lands. Hunted by death.

When thief Suri suffers a humiliating robbery, she has just one day to settle a dangerous debt. Her plan: abduct and impersonate a foreign princess at the royal ball. But when the wickedly handsome fae lord of the wasteland, Kol, crashes the party to find the princess she's pretending to be, everything takes a darker turn.

With her knife in Kol’s right-hand man, stolen trinkets in her pockets, and the kidnapped princess now missing, Suri can’t outrun the law. The King exiles her with one condition: assassinate Kol, and all is forgiven. But Kol has sworn his own brutal revenge - if his wastelands don't kill her first.

In this high-stakes fantasy debut, prepare for unexpected twists and a slow-burn romance. Fans of The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen and The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty will love this new series.

Rachel A Sandpiper (she/her) is a twenty-something fantasy author living in London. She's passionate about creating strong and complex characters in unkind and twisting worlds, but despite what she puts them through, there will always be a heart-pounding romance.

©2025 Saga Egmont (P)2025 Saga Egmont

Cut the middle third out

Not worth the credit. Dragged on and the middle was pointless. I like detailed stories, but this author added wandering through a desert for many chapters just to increase the page count with almost no actual story development.

The FMC is too blinded by her own greed to make common sense choices that just end up causing her to get into more and more trouble/danger - annoying, especially since she is supposed to be street smart.

The eventual MMC (I’m guessing by the book description) is barely in the book, and no development of their story.

This should have been thinned out a lot in the middle and have been the first half of a book. And more interaction between the main characters - they only have 4 brief interactions!

Enemies to Lovers Romantasy

A Pocket of Lies is the first book in a slow burn indie Romantasy/Fantasy series.

I listened to this book almost straight through and didn't want to put it down.

Straight off the top, we have an FMC that isn't the self-sacrificing, "I'll save everyone by myself" variety that seems to be the romantasy standard these days and a large part of why I've taken a semi-break from the genre. Suri, the FMC, has no desire to be anyone's hero. Suri grew up orphaned on the rough streets and lost her brother to a 10 yr murder sentence in the mines when she herself was only 10 yrs old. Suri has no illusion that humanity will offer her anything other than a survival of the fittest existance. People will punch you in the face and walk over your body. There is no kindness and to survive, a person has to look out for number one.

Because of Suri's insular life ( I don't think she went to any schooling?) she knows next to nothing about her own world/politics/magic, etc. Which was, I have to say, delightfully frustrating and made me want to YELL AT HER until I remembered the filter through which she views the world. Suri's first instinct is to think small, to survive to the next day. I don't even think she grasped that a "big picture" even exists until the last couple of chapters. Her worldview stayed limited to making it back to the streets of her neighborhood and starting her own gang where she never had to be afraid again... for 90% of the book. Her hyper-focus on herself might seem like selfishness but again, she knows there is little to no kindness in this world, no one gets something for nothing and all she has is her will to survive and damnit, she will fight till she's dead.

No insta-love... in fact, there are but faint whiffs of romance in this first installment. I love love loved the fact that no man made Suri compromise her own desires. She never gave an inch. That isn't what we are doing here.

The world building seems kinda hazy to me re: political systems/religion/geography but again, we only know what Suri knows so...

As it's a trilogy, and we are moving the story into a second book, I thought the ending/climax could have been a bit cleaner. Suri seems to spin in place a bit but honestly, that felt organic giving that as I noted above, she seemed to juuuuust be grasping that there might be a world at risk outside of her own. It might have read with a bit more tension if one or two things were tightened out of the climax chapter however, imo.

I can't wait to read/listen to Book 2.