Early Review: Firstborn (Firstborn #1)

Firstborn, Book 1 in the Firstborn Series by MJ Hastings

Published By: Sourcebooks (Audio)
Publication Date: September 1, 2026
Date Read: August 19, 2026
Genre: Adult – Fantasy / Romantasy
Source: Audio ARC from Libro FM and Sourcebooks Audio
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 464

Add to Goodreads | Add to Storygraph

In this epic dystopian romantasy, one eldest daughter must fight for her survival in a world where birth order determines your fate—and defiance comes at a deadly cost.

The first children take up arms. The second children take up books. The third children are taken.

The Long Night is the final trial for Firstborn soldiers, and Bryn Ruelle must prove she can take a life—or face immediate exile. If she survives, she’ll graduate to defending the country’s borders against their magic-wielding neighbors. Bryn has never made a kill before tonight. By dawn, someone will be dead by her hands.

But when Bryn discovers a plot to kidnap the Lastborn, she must discern if the threat to her youngest sister is real, or merely a ruse to throw Bryn off her game. Her search for the truth forces her to work side-by-side with an alluring traitor-born enemy. As adrenaline and rage ignite a dangerous desire she refuses to name, Bryn must choose: her country, or her family? Her siblings, or herself?

Firstborn is not a book I had heard much of, or seen much online before picking it up. When this was included in the selection of audiobooks for Sourcebooks Audios Influencer Programme in August, I read up on it and immediately thought this sounded like the perfect book for me. I am such a fantasy girlie, and back in the early 2010s, dystopia was my all time favourite. So to see this book dubbed as a ‘dystopian romantasy’ completely sold me. I am so glad I took a chance on Firstborn, as I really enjoyed this one and I am really looking forward to continuing the series.

Firstborn follows Bryn. Bryn is a Firstborn, destined to become a soldier and she is favourite to win the deadly competition The Long Night. But just before The Long Night, she hears that her youngest sibling has been kidnapped. She must decide whether to stand by her duty to her country and listen to her superiors or break the rules and go after her sister. What Bryn will find is that nothing is as it seems.

I really enjoyed the premise of this book. I really enjoyed the dystopian feel to this world where each child from each family has a specific role. It definitely gripped me right from the start. However, to me this book just felt more like epic fantasy than it did dystopia. While the beginning of this did have a slight dystopia feel, I feel like a lot of fantasy books have these sort of rules within their worlds and it’s just more fantasy-eske than dystopia. That may be more of a personal thing, but I wouldn’t consider this very dystopia personally.

Firstborn’s best features for me was the characterisation. I really enjoyed Bryn as a FMC. She goes through such a journey throughout this book and I loved experiencing that and feeling everything with her. She is a very different character at the end than she was at the beginning, and that development was definitely for the better. I just felt every emotion along with her, from her warring thoughts between what she has always believed about her world, and her wanting to save her sister more than anything to her learning all these new things about the world as she goes through this journey. It was such fantastic character development to experience. I believe this book is MJ Hawkins debut and honestly her storytelling was fantastic. I never would have guessed it was her first book. The more I read, the more I was dying to see what would happen with Bryn next. My one little gripe is that I did find the pacing slow in places. It was very mixed for me, and I don’t know if that was just because I was multi-tasking while listening to the audiobook, but there were moments when I was very much ‘passive listening’ and then times when the pacing would ramp up and I’d be dying to keep listening and find out what was going to happen next.

I did listen to the audiobook of this one, and honestly I’m really glad I did. This was the first audiobook I have read that was narrated by Saskia Maarleveld and I have to say she did an absolutely fantastic job of bringing these characters to life. I know a lot of people really prefer full cast audiobooks, but honestly Saskia was so good at making it very clear who was talking when. I didn’t for one second think that I wished it was a full cast production, because she did such a great job. I will definitely be looking out for more audiobooks narrated by her in the future, and if you are an avid audiobook listener I cannot recommend the audiobook of Firstborn enough.

Firstborn was a fantastic first instalment to what I’m sure is going to be a fantastic series. I do think it was much more focused on plot and character development than it was on the romance, so if you’re picking this up purely for the romance then that is something to be aware of. However, the romance was amazing once it got going. I loved our MMC (I’m purposefully being vague so nobody knows who the romantic interest is) and I cannot wait to see more of the two of the them in the next book. There is a slight bit of spice in here, but it’s not a main focus. I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely be continuing the series whenever book 2 releases. This is definitely a 2026 debut to look out for!