Review: One Dark Window (The Shepherd King #1)

One Dark Window (The Shepherd King #1)
By Rachel Gillig

Published By: Orbit
Publication Date: September 27, 2022
Date Read: January 26, 2023
Genre: YA – Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 399

From Goodreads:
Elspeth needs a monster. The monster might be her.

Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunder—she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets.

But nothing comes for free, especially magic.

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure Blunder from the dark magic infecting it. And the highwayman? He just so happens to be the King’s nephew, Captain of the most dangerous men in Blunder…and guilty of high treason.

Together they must gather twelve Providence Cards—the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.

One Dark Window is a book that has been on my radar for a while. I received the first book as part of my Fairyloot subscription and it just sat there on the shelf for a while as I didn’t really know much about it. Then I don’t know what happened, but everyone seemed to be reading this duology and loving it. I honestly was going to get rid of it until I saw everyone raving about it, then I decided I should definitely give it a go…. I kind of wish I’d gone with my gut and got rid of it. This book was just not for me.

One Dark Window has a very spooky, gothic romance kind of vibe, which usually would absolutely be my kind of book but I found it really slow paced and boring. Had I not been listening to this one on audio (and the fact it was the choice for my book club), I probably would have DNF’d it. I just can’t put my finger on what I didn’t like, I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t really connect with the characters very much, and I really found myself zoning out quite a lot throughout the first half of the book.

On the positive side, I did really like the last 20-30% of the book. I felt like some of the twists were exciting and the pacing really ramped up. If the rest of the book had pacing like that last part, I probably would have really enjoyed it, but as it was… I was just really disengaged and bored with it. I won’t be going into the second book as I just didn’t enjoy this one enough to continue. I know this one has a huge fanbase, but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me.

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