Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Her Name Is Knight

Note: This book is being read and reviewed as both a book that’s been sitting on my bookshelf for months and because the sequel, “They Come at Knight” is being released this Tuesday, September 13th, 2022. If you’ve read this book, make sure to order a copy! If you’re new to this duology, why don’t you order both books today? My review for “They Come at Knight” will be up in the next couple of days.

Okay, I’ll confess: I bought this book mainly because I love books about female assassins and revenge. But it also has a serious case of “Ooh shiny pretty cover!” I mean, look at it! All those swirls of orange and peach tones? It’s absolutely striking.

But seriously.

I finally broke down and bought this book off of my own wishlist because I had heard so many good things about it and I don’t regret it one bit. It’s a slick novel, moving quick and smart between past and present (or, as the author cleverly puts it, Before and After) as the main character, Nena, tells us in first person POV about how she went from a chieftain’s daughter in Ghana to an assassin for her rich adoptive family and the geopolitical organization they are members of while the author simultaneously narrates Nena’s life in 3rd person POV after she became an assassin and we enter the story as Nena is about to enter a complex and morally confusing series of assignments that will upend her entire life and everything she has worked for.

Often I find that chapter switching and POV switching doesn’t work for me. It often slows down the pacing or makes it uneven. It also tends to rip the reader out of the story by making them work too hard to extricate themselves out of the time and POV they were just reading and get into the groove of reading a new time and a new POV. Angoe seems to have clued into the fact that one of the best remedies for this is shorter chapters and a shorter amount of time spent in Before and After. Don’t make the readers stay in one place too long. Don’t let them get too used to it, and it won’t be so jarring when they have to leave and switch. It keeps the suspense nice and tight, it keeps the narrative fresh, it keeps the pacing even, and it keeps the book moving quick and bright.

This book is a fascinating and compelling page-turner that I read in less than 8 hours. I couldn’t put it down. My only complaint was that it was rather predictable in a lot of ways. But I can hardly complain when it was still so dang good, right?