Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

First in The Ferryman and the Flame series

1.5 stars (DNF)

Kaliel is always getting into trouble. She sneaks off to swim with mermpeople and one night meets Krishani. Krishani is meant to marry the land and leave Avristar to join the Lands of Men. Kaliel is apparently warned about her love according to the synopsis about her love for the Ferryman. She is also a Flame, one of nine apocalyptic weapons, sparking a warking. She awakens Avred, not knowing she may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. I don’t know what half of this means because apparently this is a synopsis of something else because this wasn’t what I was reading at all. It could’ve developed into what the synopsis hinted but I couldn’t bring myself to read past 35% of the book. I hate DNFing, but I couldn’t go on. This synopsis seems misleading to me because I was reading about a girl frolicking about causing mischief and thinking about Krishani’s beautiful mismatched eyes while also fearing her trip to the Great Oak.


The main female character is Kaliel. Kaliel is constantly being told that she is special. In my opinion the only special thing about Kaliel is the fact that flowers grow when she walks. Other than that Kaliel has no attributes that I can think of. She isn’t very bright and the only thing she seems useful for is making terrible decisions. I personally didn’t like her very much. I tried to, but I found myself disliking her more and more with every page I read. I felt very disconnected from her when I was reading her POV and I just didn’t care what was going to happen next.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 1

The main male character is Krishani. I actually really liked Krishani at first. His POV at the beginning was promising and then he went away and we got Kaliel’s POV, but when he came back his POV was nearly unbearable. I skimmed some parts and found myself rolling my eyes a lot. Kaliel thinks about Krishani’s eyes a lot and Krishani thinks about Kaliel’s a lot. This is really annoying for some reason. With every mention of someone’s eye color I wanted to scream.

Swoon Worthy Scale: 1.5

The Villain- I didn’t get far enough to encounter a villain or a problem.

Villain Scale: DNF

The other side characters all seemed fake and just there to be there and move the story along. I don’t even feel like talking about them, but I will mention one. I really liked Pux. He was interesting and cute in a bubbly way. Plus he has a wicked cool power.


Character Scale: 1

I feel terrible that I wasn’t able to finish this book, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I told myself at the beginning of this year if I ran into a book that I didn’t enjoy I would DNF and I did that for the first time this year and pretty much my whole entire life. This book probably could’ve been good if I kept reading, but I didn’t want to. Maybe I’ll try to read this again one day, but not anytime soon. I really wanted to like this book, but just because I didn’t like this book, doesn’t mean someone else won’t. This book just didn’t work for me and maybe I wasn’t in the mood for it.

Cover Thoughts: I actually really like the cover. It’s stunning and also why I requested this book. The other covers for it are very pretty, too.

A copy was provided by Netgalley and Create Space for an honest review.