Review: Healer to the Broken King by Avie Adams

Title: Healer to the Broken King
Author: Avie Adams
Series: Brides of Myth #1
Publication: July 15, 2024
Genre: Dark Romantasy
Find it on: Amazon
Rating: 4/5★

She serves a god. He wears a crown.
Their forbidden love could topple his kingdom.

Calliste is a healer moments away from becoming high priestess when the dark, domineering King Theron storms her sanctuary. Abducted and blackmailed, she watches nine years of grueling effort go up in smoke—along with her hopes of safety. He’s dragging her back to the same capital she fled, a glittering city that left her with nightmares and scars.

Theron is a shell of a man with the weight of a crown slowly crushing him. He’ll do anything to save his sleep-cursed son—even capturing a beautiful priestess cherished by the gods. But as Calliste begins to mend his shattered heart, it takes everything he has not to act on his dangerous desires.

Their forbidden passion soon inflames tensions in Theron’s kingdom—and sparks envy in the god Calliste serves.

Bound by duty and with destructive secrets lingering between them, can their love survive, or will it doom them both?

As soon as I started reading Healer to the Broken King, I was hooked. And the story never let me go. It had a lot of my favorite things in books like a slow burn forbidden romance, dual point of view, Greek mythology, forced proximity and way more. The cliffhanger ending was a bit abrupt and unexpected but it only made me want the second book even more.

Healer to the Broken King is written in dual points of view with Calliste and Theron as main characters of the story. Calliste is a healer and is about to take her vows to become high priestess of the Sisterhood of Epione, which she worked nine hard years for until King Theron storms in and takes her away to Anthemos, the capital in the Kingdom of Hesperis. The king is in need for a healer for his seven-year-old son, Kalias, who hasn’t awoken for six weeks. As they travel together and are forced to spend time with each other they grow towards each other and these feelings only amplify once they reach the Anthemos. Both are aware that nothing can happen between the two of them since she’s set to become high priestess and he’s the king, but still their feelings can’t lie. In the meanwhile Calliste does everything she can to heal Kalias, even traveling to the underworld in spirit form. But the royal court is a treacherous place and Calliste has secrets that she doesn’t want revealed. But she will do anything to save the king’s son, even if it might kill her.

There was so much to love about this book. I highly enjoyed reading about Calliste and king Theron traveling together, getting to know each other. Their banter was very entertaining and I loved the situations they found themselves in. The forbidden romance was everything to me. It was a slow burn but oh so worth the wait for that kiss. There was a “who did this to you” moment and I just lived for that. Calliste has big secrets, though, which are not even all revealed yet to the reader so that kind of worries me for the next book because I don’t know what it will mean for her and Theron. I hope they both can be honest with each other in the next installment. The middle part of the book was a bit slow for me but I soon got over that once certain things were revealed…

The secondary characters were also all just fantastic to read about. Lykos, who is the polemarchos of King Theron (the captain of his sentinels) was probably my favorite out all of them. He seemed carefree, funny and without any troubles but deep down there was so much more to him and his main job was protecting Theron, which he did a great job off. I also thought Gaiane, the keeper of the palace and her daughter Melitta were great to read about. The rest of Theron’s sentinels were also fun to read about. They were a great bunch!

Healer to the Broken King by Avie Adams was a magical story full of forbidden love, humor and Greek mythology. Romantasy fans will absolutely devour it! The world building was top-notch, the writing was absolutely beautiful and the romance was the perfect slow burn giving me all the angst and loning. I’m already looking forward to the next book!

About the author:

A bookworm and a perfectly disorganized mom who habitually burns dinners – that would be me! I used to pen dark fantasy tales until I retired my cloak of doom and gloom, shimmied into a pink ballgown, and switched to happier stories with romantic tension of epic proportions. Tormented protagonists with emotional wounds, slow-building passion, and all the feels—how could anyone not adore it?

I live on the south-east coast of England, rumored to get most sunshine in the UK. (Rest assured, it’s definitely a rumor).

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