Review: Gild by Raven Kennedy; a King Midas retelling

Gild by Raven Kennedy 

(The Plated Prisoner #1)

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2 

Genre: Adult Fantasy, Romance

The fae abandoned this world to us. And the ones with power rule.

Gold.

Gold floors, gold walls, gold furniture, gold clothes. In Highbell, in the castle built into the frozen mountains, everything is made of gold.

Even me.

King Midas rescued me. Dug me out of the slums and placed me on a pedestal. I’m called his precious. His favored. I’m the woman he Gold-Touched to show everyone that I belong to him. To show how powerful he is. He gave me protection, and I gave him my heart. And even though I don’t leave the confines of the palace, I’m safe.

Until war comes to the kingdom and a deal is struck.

Suddenly, my trust is broken. My love is challenged. And I realize that everything I thought I knew about Midas might be wrong.

Because these bars I’m kept in, no matter how gilded, are still just a cage. But the monsters on the other side might make me wish I’d never left.

This is a King Midas retelling, but centres on Auren, the King’s favoured, and the only person he has ever turned to gold (not solid gold, he can do that, but everything about her, hair, eyes, blood etc. is gold-coloured).  He promised to keep her safe, and she is safe in her golden cage high up in his golden palace. She’s also very lonely. And bored.

I certainly enjoyed this book, even though the ‘a golden cage is still a cage’ message is really in your face. There is decent world-building with magic and kingdoms and the promise for more detail in future books. 

My favourite part of the book was definitely the main character. Auren had a shitty lot in life before being found by Midas, and she is determined to look on the bright side of every situation. Her interaction with other people is limited, what with living in a cage, but she finds ways to have fun, and I love her sass and sense of humour. 

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Thank you Social Butterfly PR for including me in this book blitz.

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Bailey is as normal as could be, with a genius IQ and a photographic memory. But still, normal for her. Then, things happen -- a guy breaks into her house in the middle of the night to take her hostage. She learns her father is billionaire tech genius Peter Francis, the same guy she’s idolized all her life. She finds all this out when she meets dark, mysterious, and electrifying Kashton Colello. He’s also an associate of her father’s, and he gives Bailey two choices—go with him and meet her father or survive on her own because those kidnappers are going to try again.

It’s a no-brainer.

After this, three things become clear for Bailey:

1. She has to live at her father’s sprawling estate, complete with bodyguards and the best security that money can buy.

2. She’s no longer an only child. She has three siblings and has no idea what to do with them and vice versa.

3. She is being guarded by Kash himself. Personally guarded. And there is a lot of guarding going on there and some of it is going to drive her crazy.

A complete outsider in a world of wealth and decadence, Bailey has to find her way within a family that has more secrets than she could have imagined. One of these secrets could be deadly…