This had all the makings of a great novel, and some parts I loved so much. Overall I would have liked to see a little more world building to feel more connected.

True rating 3.5⭐️

There were moments where I was genuinely surprised this was a debut novel. Was it perfect? No, but I was incredibly enjoyable. I truly enjoyed the world building and history of this story. The concept of magic users and those who defend them is always a fun read. Now throw in some corrupt magic, traitors, and assassins, and it fully captured my attention.

It’s written as enemies-to-lovers but is more of friendly rivals-to-lovers if we’re honest. I feel that we could’ve gotten more depth from their relationship but it is the first in a series so I imagine we’ll be getting a lot more of them later.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This book had potential! I would have loved to see more in-depth world building and diving more into the Xolani/Starvein/Keeper history and relationships, as well as the magic system. I think the romance fell flat for me, personally, and there was a lot more space for tension to build it up and have it be more of an enemies to lovers. I did enjoy the plot twist in the epilogue, however! It did have me on my toes trying to figure out who to trust and who not to.

Keeper of Scarlet Petals is a fun fantasy with a unique storyline and romance!

A keeper is someone is who is assigned to protect another. The story is set at Sanctuary which is a school for keepers and mages where they train and learn. Jasmine is assigned a young man to protect and although she can’t stand him, he might become tolerable at some point. Jasmine is continuously training in order to fight off assassins for both of them and it just might cause a friendship between them. I love a badass female main character. This book was so fun and I loved the idea of the keeper! The characters were lovable and had me giggling at times. I can’t wait to continue this series!

Thank you so much to Netgalley, A.N. Skye, and Aethon Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review. This published today on May 14th!

I have posted my review on Goodreads, in my Facebook book club, and will rave about this on TikTok!

This was a good start. Jasmine is a keeper and she is learning skills that will help keep a noble safe. That noble turns out to be her former classmate Asher. Together they are being targeted by assassins and need to get a handle on their magic to keep them safe.

What to expect:
*Academia
*Assasins
*Cursed magic

Wow. A.N. Skye did a great job of quickly capturing my attention and holding it through the whole book!

Keeper of the Scarlet Petals is the first book of a romantasy, enemies to lovers series. Jasmine is a strong female lead character who must protect a man she can’t stand. It reads like YA but there are a couple scenes with a little bit of spice. I enjoyed that there was more to the plot than smut. The ending was unpredictable and blew my mind. I absolutely wasn’t expecting it. I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the books in the series.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this story, but it fell flat for me. Although I was immediately interested in the struggles that Jasmine and Asher were going through, it just felt like a lot of the development in the book was either rushed through or it wasn't explained at all which made me lose interest in the story. As I got deeper into it, I became less and less interested. Jasmine went from just putting up with Asher to being insanely in love with him in like two seconds. The world also wasn't very well developed. They kept talking about the kingdom they lived in, but nothing about it was ever explained except that the people who had magic protected the kingdom. There were just a lot of things that I felt like could have used more explanation.

That being said, the premise of this story is pretty great and I did enjoy Jasmine and Asher as characters as well as Lydia and Pina.

Firstly, Thank you to Netgalley and A N Skye for allowing me to read a copy of this book for free to leave an honest review.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I liked Jasmine as a FMC but the book just took me a while to get stuck into. I did liked the cursed magic system and elements of romance. “You’re mine” The flirting/banter between FMC and MMC was some of my favourite parts. Even if they did change opinions of each other rather quickly.

I did however feel like I wanted more descriptions of the world, it’s history, where did everyone come from. Etc. I believe this is the first of these books and therefore building a clear world makes the rest of the books more enjoyable as I can visualise everything so much clearer.

In conclusion I would recommend this book to lovers of the Romantasy genre.

Keeper of the Scarlet Petals is your basic romantasy story. I liked a lot of the dialogue, but the plot was giving me trouble paying attention

The overall plot was pretty interesting and the magic/schooling system was enough to keep me interested, but it came off a bit flat to me. I lot of telling, but not necessarily showing. I couldn't tell you anything about the kingdom or culture they're in. It's mentioned a multitude of times that one of the characters is from the "gutters", but there's no stories, descriptors, or any of the typical useful information that helps form a character and why we care about them. I enjoyed Lydia, but everyone else felt pretty underdeveloped unfortunately.

I was rooting for Jasmine from the beginning! I feel like it took a while for me to become engrossed in this book, but overall Im glad I was able to read it! Secrets, survival, life lessons-good book!


Jasmine is the top fighter of her year and with things going on in their society, she is assigned a Keeper role before even beginning her second year.
Asher was a Keeper in Training and Jasmine’s best competition, for fighting, until a tragedy impacts his family.
Now the two must come together to survive what is in store for them. Jasmine learns there is more to life than just survival. They both learn that they might be the only one the other can trust in. There are a lot of secrets and plot twists. I definitely am looking forward to where the rest of this series goes.

Jasmine is the top fighter of her year and with things going on in their society, she is assigned a Keeper role before even beginning her second year.
Asher was a Keeper in Training and Jasmine’s best competition, for fighting, until a tragedy impacts his family.
Now the two must come together to survive what is in store for them. Jasmine learns there is more to life than just survival. They both learn that they might be the only one the other can trust in. There are a lot of secrets and plot twists. I definitely am looking forward to where the rest of this series goes.

Just finished reading this ARC copy of Keeper of Scarlet Petals by A N Skye. And thank you @netgalley for this.

It's a story of two who try to survive from a critical position they are at for the sake of their kingdom. Even though they get stuck at a difficult stance without being fully aware of the threat that possess against their lives. It soon changes when frequent threats to their lives arrive. They do their best at improving themselves even though they are well aware that they are being baited as the kingdom doesn't value their life much. The romantic development between them is interesting.i loved that they didn't hold back their feelings after realising it.

I loved the idea of this story but there was a lot of issues. Everything felt very surface level. There wasn’t much world building. There wasn’t a lot of explaining what all the different types of people there were. The two main characters have very little depth and lacked chemistry. I felt like the dialogue was strange and unnatural at times. The constant talk about Jasmine’s lack of cooking skills was strange to me. She also was supposedly lacking in all other skills besides fighting but a couple of hour long sessions with Riker and she was good. I don’t know. It just didn’t really work for me.

I do feel like it holds a lot of potential. The idea of it is great. I just think we need more in depth descriptions and world building to flesh it out a little bit.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc. All opinions are my own.

A really fun and engaging story of Jasimen, a Keeper in training. She is taken suddenly from her first year of training and thrown into full Keeper duties to protect the last living heir of a noble house. Jasmine then is forced to grow suddenly as she protects her charge. The magic system in this word is really cool, and well thought out.

The world building of this book was really good and made everything really smooth and it flowed well. The characters were enjoyable to read, as was the plot. I felt like because I enjoyed the FMC, it made the voice of the book so much more easy to read while also being fun and enjoyable. Overall, I really liked this book!

For me, this was an entirely average fantasy. It had all the key pieces - fmc, love interest, best friend, nemesis turned ally etc, and the plot did all it needed to do, so it read smoothly and there were no unnecessary scenes. However, I don't have anything particularly more glowing to say than that! There was no real backstory to any of these characters that made you root for them, Jasmine's 'living in the gutters' tagline can only do so much. One character suffers his whole family being murdered and seems to continue on with their life with no issues? And the spicy scene in this book also came out of absolutely no-where, that was probably the most off-putting element of the novel.
This was a quick fantasy read that didn't do much for me overall! (Also think I must have missed the significance of the title because I don't remember any scarlet petals?)

Such a good book! The twist at the end?! I had no idea that was coming! I love Jasmine she's such a bad ass and the banter she does is so funny! It took me a while to like Asher but in the end I loved him. The storyline was easy to follow and the spice was great! I can't wait to see what book 2 brings!

Amazing story that gripped me from the beginning. This book is fast paced, exciting and steamy. The characters are so well written that I can picture them in my head. Twists and turns that leave you guessing what will happen next.

Rating: 4.5/5
I received eARC for my honest opinion.

In this book you have the Keepers and the Starveins, the keepers are the protectors of the Starveins. However, they’re not just protectors, they're also there to give advice & cook, basically to take care of them because Starveins are the magic welders of their society, but their magic has a small downside. It’s slow to cast, so they need the help of Keepers to make sure that they will not be harmed during a battle. In this book you will meet Jasmin who is in the middle of her first year of training to become a Keeper at Sanctuary, she wakes up to find out that she is getting pulled out of her training to become a Keeper to a Starvein whose family was assassinated. It turns out that Starvien is her number one rival, Asher. He was a keeper until that horrible day with his family. With the assassins still out there, they now have to make them stay alive to figure out who and why they want Asher dead.

I really loved this book right away. The world building in this book was done well, the pace of the book was perfect for fantasy lovers and the characters were easy to connect with. I thought the plot was well done, with the right amount of chemistry, to the action in the book, the drama, and the mystery of trying to figure out what is going on. I loved the little twists and turns that the author put in the plot, I am happy that I was right on who the traitor in the group was though, but I didn’t guess the spy.

I liked Jasmine right away in this book, she is funny, smart, strong, and determined not to become a street rat ever again in her life. I liked that you gotta see her character developed throughout the book but at the same time she still is true to the person that she is. I found her to be easy to connect with and I would love to have a friend like her or to have her as my Keeper if I was a Starvien. I loved getting to see the relationship change and develop between Asher and Jasmine. Asher is quiet and a good fighter, that is why he joined to become a Keeper instead of a Starvine, but with the events of his family he must jump into Starvine training now. I liked that he is a thinker and likes to have a plan for situations that might come up. I really loved the protective side of Asher when it came to Jasmine, a few times I was like Aw! They really do make a cute couple and I am one that loves forced proximity in books so when that scene came up, I had a huge smile on my face.

I hate cliffhangers in books but honestly, I cannot wait until the next one comes out and we get to see more of those two. I recommend this book to anyone who likes romantasy, forced proximity, books with action, plot twists, and great characters.

I want to thank NetGalley and Aethon Books for the opportunity to review this book.