A Thousand Heartbeats by Kiera Cass

Annika is a princess who has lived a life of luxury. Lennox is a bloody enforcer for his outcast tribe. Both are stuck in a life that is not their own. When their paths cross however, something both believed was unattainable for them sparks to life… love. With their paths being so intertwined and atrocities committed on both side, will the possibility of love be enough to forgive all wrongs? Only time will tell.
I am a long time fan of Kiera Cass. I read the Selection series a few years back and loved it! Recently I read the Betrothed and it reminded me why I liked Kiera Cass’ writing style. However, I think I have to say… A Thousand Heartbeats might be my favorite of them all. This book had a little more of what I liked than the other books by Cass. Over the years I’ve come to love authors like Sarah J. Maas, Sabaa Tahir, and Victoria Aveyard. What do they have in common? They write very detailed worlds with characters that grow and change over the course of their slightly longer books. While this was a standalone book, I felt like more of these traits were incorporated i

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Annika is being forced into an arranged marriage for the future of her country, Kadier, after the disappearance of her mother. She is to marry Nickolas, the only other person in the kingdom that has a claim to the throne that her father, a now cold and distant shell of what he once was, sits on. Unfortunately for Annika, Nickolas happens to be a bore. The only thing that brings her solace is her time in the library with her friend Rhett. Rhett is a commoner that her mother elevated to the status of royal librarian, but he is Annika’s closest friend. That is, until he confesses to her that he is madly in love with her. He asks her to run away with him… run away from Nickolas, a loveless marriage, and the rules that bind her to a life of restrictions. The only problem is, she doesn’t love him. However, Rhett get’s her to thinking about what love should be.
Far away, in a long forgot part of the world, Lennox lives in a much harsher reality. With his father dead, and his mother on the arm of the clan’s pig of a leader, Lennox has learned that it’s kill or be killed. Until one day when Kawan, the clan leader, gives him an assignment… a suicide mission is more like it. Generally, those who are choses to go on these missions are not only allowed to pick what they want to do that will help the clan prosper, but they get to hand pick their team. While Lennox still gets to decide what his mission will be, he is given a team. A team which consists of 3 people whose skill he doesn’t know and 1 who he is constantly at war with. Quickly, Lennox learns that his team has more potential than even Kawan couldn’t have guessed, a common goal and an aspiration in mind. Lennox and his team decide they will give the clan the most priceless commodity they can… hope. They plan to go to Kadier and steal the crown that their history says rightly belongs to them.
I found this book to be a simple, but enjoyable stand-alone book, just what I’ve been looking for in a book recently. While I generally enjoy a more lengthy journey, it helps make the world more immersive, I was pleasantly surprised with how much of that Cass was able to put into this singular book. (That’s not to say it was immensely detailed… it is still just a stand-alone.) I thought that there were some really good moments that weren’t always my first guess, which was also very pleasant given the book’s length.
I wouldn’t say there was a great deal of character growth in either character. Both Annika and Lennox are passionate about things, even if they must remain silent about it. I love seeing how that passion becomes braver once they encounter each other. For Lennox he depends more on his conscious and less on what is expected of him. For Annika she becomes for confident in herself and the power she has as princess. I think when we have a book that changes points of view between main characters we are in danger of missing character growth. What I mean by that is when we get to hear the narrator’s train of thought we sometimes lose sight of the fact that a trait they always had begins to not just appear in their thoughts but in their actions. For Lennox he always has a sense of what is morally right and wrong, but because of the world he lives in, it generally is only acknowledged in his thoughts. Once he meets Annika we begin to see him exercising his moral compass in his actions, sometimes subtly and sometimes obviously.
Ironically the part of the book that left me the most frustrated was the cave scene during the hurricane. It had so much potential, but I feel like Kiera Cass didn’t quite know how to navigate it or was crunched for time… something! Here you have our two antagonists stuck in a cave together during a near death experience. He’s killed her mother, and her father killed his father. They keep trying to kill each other, but also continue to rescue each other. They have undeniable chemistry, but duty dictates that they should be enemies and so they are. However in a random twist of fate to keep from falling asleep (and thus unprotected) in front of each other, they begin to share secrets. It’s during this oddly vulnerable exchange that they decide the line they’ve been teetering on is leaning towards love instead of hate. The change in attitude is so sudden, in my opinion, that he made it feel a little too hokey for my taste.
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HUGE SPOILER ALERT!!!
The part of this book that had me the most upset was when Lennox comes across Kawan hunting after the hurricane. After a frustrated conversation, Kawan goes to leave and we see what he was hunting… Lennox’s “pet” fox Thistle! Legit it was at that moment I cried the hardest!! And that’s saying something!!!

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. For a stand-alone book it was so much better than I expected. For the length of the book there was more detail and character development than I was expecting. While I’ve come to enjoy more development in the books I read, I was more than happy reading this book and I would 100% recommend this book.