Blog post: http://sonichreads.tumblr.com/post/16... 
 Review: My goddamn sense only realised that this book came out last year after I read the book. I'm not really sure what purpose urged me to buy it, but it was on my shelf so I got to read it. 
 Technically, And I Darken tells a story of Lada and she is born and raised by a nurse in Wallachia and is sold to the Ottoman Empire along side her brother, Radu. That's where they met Mehmed, who is supposedly an heir to the throne that he could not hold because he is too young and there was an attempted assassination upon him. That's when Radu and Lada had a plan. 
 This book was told gender-swapped and based on a historical figure called Vlad the Impaler. I didn't know this guy until I read this book. That's one of the reasons why I adored it.The writing was like typical YA books I've read, but it was sort of different as well. It wasn't too descriptive to throw me off, it had the nice amount of characters' monologue, it had irreplaceable words for these characters' emotion which was heartbreaking a little bit but also not too much. I well understood the language and writing; not only that, I really loved the dialogue since their communication seemed to be going smoothly. 
 This story felt like a fantasy to me more than anything, even though it was a historical fiction. The world and its name, the setting, the characters--they just fit in one fantasy world. I was reading this book on a holiday trip so the path throughout was very rocky. I followed the story well enough, but the details were a bit confusing. I thought the plot was very well executed and organized. I thought the author was careful with her events since the birth of these two characters. And like I said, it was a bit heartbreaking at the end, but you will not tear your way through it. 
 At first, I was wayyyyy too skeptical to like Lada. I was in a mixed feeling to whether like her or not. She was resilient, strong, ruthless, and determined. But she was also way too strong for any other person to be like. She's like an entirely new character that I've read, but very much familiar. Although being a girl was not socially accepted in that time period, she was one that proved everyone wrong. Whereas Lada was that on her own, Radu was another story. He is impossibly soft and nice and gentle. He is those kind of people that appear so sweet and lovely to everyone, but once you've done him wrong, he'll stab you in the back. No hesitation. No remorse. 
 Overall: I enjoyed the book so much although I took a long time finishing it. I will be picking the next book up, hoping for the best.