REVIEW | Fragile Longing by Cora Reilly

Title: Fragile Longing 

Author: Cora Reilly 

Publication Date: September 30, 2020

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Goodreads | Amazon 

Sofia knows how it feels to be the consolation prize.

Too young.
Not blond.
And definitely not an ice princess.
Her sister is—was all those things. Perfection. Until she wasn’t. Until she ran off to be with the enemy and left her fiancé behind.
Now Sofia is given to Danilo in her sister’s stead, knowing she’ll never be more than second best. Yet, she can’t stop longing for the love of the man she’s been crushing on even when he was still her sister’s.

Danilo is a man who’s used to getting what he wants.
Power.
Respect.
The sought-after ice princess.
Until another man steals his bride-to-be. Danilo knows that for a man in his position losing his woman can lead to a loss of face.
Wounded pride.
Thirst for revenge.
A dangerous combination—one Danilo can’t leave behind, not even when a girl just as precious takes her sister’s place to placate him. Yet, she’s got one flaw: she’s not her sister.
Unable to forget what he’s lost, Danilo might lose what he’s been given. 

My Thoughts... 

*ARC kindly provided by the author and The Next Step PR in exchange for an honest review*

I really enjoyed this book and loved reading from the perspectives of Sofia and Danilo. They were both interesting characters and so very different from each other.

This book also served one of my favourite tropes - the arranged marriage, opposites and age-gap trope.

In this book, we grow with Sophia from a young age as she finds out about her arranged marriage to Danilo. Although Sophia is not opposed to it, as she has always had a crush on Danilo, even though he was to be married to her sister. There is so much angst and feelings and emotions involved with these characters, especially Sophia. There was so much longing and yearning within Sophia in wanting Danilo’s love and so much angst accompanying it. I also really enjoyed Danilo, and understanding his side of things, especially if you have read Twisted Pride also by Cora Reilly.

Also, appearances of other beloved characters also appeared in this book which was very exciting to read about and it just makes me miss some of them.

One thing that I didn’t really like when reading this book, was that it started from when Sophia was young. So it battled with lots of childish jealousy and feelings that I did not particularly like. I think it was heavily focused on her when she was young and I didn’t really like reading about that. But that’s just personal preference for me, I wished she was a little older, perhaps seventeen when this book took place and some small flashbacks.I also thought the story was slower paced and felt like it was dragging in particular scenes and moments.

Overall, this was book was really enjoyable to read and if your craving your fix of Cora Reilly or an arranged marriage, age-gap and opposites attract tropes, then this book will fill your cravings.