The Sin Eater's Daughter - Melinda Salisbury

I am the perfect weapon.
I kill with a single touch.

Twylla is blessed. The Gods have chosen her to marry a prince, and rule the kingdom. But the favour of the Gods has it's price. A deadly poison infuses her skin. Those who anger the queen must die under Twylla's fatal touch.

Only Lief, an outspoken new guard, can see past Twylla's chilling role to the girls she truly is.

Yet in a court as dangerous as the queen's, some truths should not be told...

When I first read about The Sin Eater's Daughter I was hooked, wanted to read it right then. When the cover was released I wanted to read it even more, I pre-ordered a copy which I don't normally do if I have a review copy until I've long since read the book and fallen in love. And then it sat on my shelves, unread but for the first chapter until I got an email asking if I'd like to sign up for the blog tour for the next book in the series, The Sleeping Prince, and the first thing I did was pull this one off the shelf and start reading, again...

Twylla is apparently the living embodiment of the daughter of the gods, possessed with the power to kill at a single touch. Dosed with poison on a regular basis she is used as the kingdom's executioner and everyone lives in fear of her, actively avoiding her lest she should accidentally touch them. Life goes on as usual until her favorite bodyguard falls ill and she is left alone with Lief, a new guard. Engaged to Prince Merek, the evil queen's only child (because every story has to have an evil queen) Twylla soon discovers that things aren't actually as they seem and she is just one pawn in a very large game.

Most of The Sin Eater's Daughter, in my opinion anyway, is laying the ground for what's to come in The Sleeping Prince. I was fascinated by the Lormerian fairy tale about him and by the use of fairy tales in general, this is what kept me reading the book. There's not much action but I can't help but think that a lot of the little details in this one could prove to be important in book two. As for the characters I'm still not sure whether I actually liked any of them very much. Twylla seemed to be quite two dimensional and 'woe is me' a lot, she definitely improved a lot after the discovery of her real situation actually is - trying to say more without being spoilery is difficult! The evil queen was excellent, probably more psychotic than evil actually but then anyone who comes from a background that incestuous, even if they are royalty, probably isn't sane any more.

It was maybe slightly too heavy on the romance for me, I though there was going to be the inevitable love triangle at several points which is usually a big no-no for me so I was ever hopeful that this wasn't going to be the center-point of the story all the way through. It was and it wasn't, although there are two choices in her life she's never 'in love' with them both at the same time and Merek & Lief both seem to want different things from her as well. As I said, there may not be much action but there's plenty of detail - too much for a lot of people I've heard - but this is the sort of fantasy I like, detail orientated and (hopefully) providing a good building block for the books to come. I liked Melinda's writing, it was rich and descriptive and her invented fairy tales were fantastic, I would read a book of those if she was ever to write them! I think what mostly kept The Sin Eater's Daughter at four clocks for me is the fact I don't have to wait to read book two because after that ending, which seemed a little disconnected but still almost cliffhanger-ish, I wouldn't have wanted to wait a year to read The Sleeping Prince!

The Sin Eater's Daughter - Melinda Salisbury 

ISBN - 9781407147635

Publisher - Scholastic 

Release date - February 5 2015

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository