Written by Jennifer Estep, Protect the Prince is the second novel in the Crown of Shards series, and picks up with Evie as the queen a few months after the fight, as she and her friends are about to depart for Andvari to broker a new treaty. However, she is still struggling with her feelings for Sully, despite the fact that he insists that they can never be, and this is the country ruled by his father and where Sully is a bastard prince.
This novel did a good job of being consistent with Kill the Queen in writing style and keeping the characters interesting. The author brings Palomina forward as a main character from a support, and we get to learn a lot more about Sully.
However, this novel makes the series OFFICIALLY FOR ADULTS ONLY. And, in all honesty, that scene(s?) came off as very awkward and just out of place with the rest of the writing. And that is the negative for this book.
The plots and twists were great, though the forgiveness was a bit too easy to come by afterwords. There is also the fact that Evie constantly questioning if she should be/is worthy of being Queen is just annoying. This novel, along with the last and even the next, could have probably been written as one novel if they had cut out a lot of the useless repetition and let Evie be as smart all the time as she is instead of stringing things out for the reader.
Overall, this one was another good installment and interesting. Worth the read, unless you don’t like explicit adult scenes. Then, steer clear.
