Review: Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan
Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan Published by Blue Box Press on May 26, 2020
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Women
Pages: 300
Format: ARC
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Dig a little and you'll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern.
Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old.
Pry and one of us might confess we saved our first kiss for each other. The most clumsy, wet, sloppy . . . spectacular thirty seconds of my adolescence.
Get into our business and you'll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant.
Twenty years later, my "awkward duckling" best friend from childhood, the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.
Finer. Fiercer. Smarter.
Taken.
Tell me it's wrong.
Tell me the boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have.
When we find each other again, everything stands in our way--secrets, lies, promises.
But we didn't come this far to give up now.
And I know just the move to make if I want to make him mine.
” I belong to myself.”
Kimba Allen is a woman who knows how to wield power as she’s helped to elect some of the nation’s most powerful government officials. She’s my kind of girl. As a long time fan of both Scandal and Kennedy Ryan, this intersection of romance and politics is just my kind of catnip.
I thought I knew who Kimba was, and what to expect from her book, after reading The Kingmaker Duet but I was wrong. But in the best possible way.
(Sidenote: You do not have to read The Kingmaker Duet in order to follow along but I highly suggest it.)
Queen Move is about everything the title cover suggested it would be: Legacy. Power. Passion.
Kimba and Ezra Stern were destined to be soulmates since they were babies. The writing was on the wall and as they got older, it was clear that these two would only have eyes for each other. They both thought that they would celebrate most of their teenage milestones together. However, that all changed when Ezra moved away and they lost contact for almost 20 years.
There was a good amount of backstory in this love tale and while normally, I’m not a person who likes flashbacks that much, it was imperative for this story. Seeing these two grow up, witnessing the bond they had, made everything so much sweeter when they reconnected.
When these two see each other again for the first time in ages, things have changed tremendously. Ezra has evolved so much from the awkward boy who wasn’t quite sure of his place in the world. Kimba is no longer the sometimes shy girl who stutters.
As these two are around each other more, the light that was always a flicker is now a full-blown flame. However, things are a lot more complicated. There’s a lot of baggage and obstacles these two have to deal with, including something major they both didn’t see coming.
A love like theirs is once in a lifetime. They know they’re meant for each other, and readers know it too. What I really appreciated though was that while they needed each other, they weren’t solely dependent on one another. Kimba belongs to herself before she belongs to any man, and that includes the absolute love of her life – Ezra. She’ll be the first one to tell you that.
Ezra is gentle and understanding yet absolute in the things he cares about and loves. He’s the perfect complement to Kimba. He’s a passionate soul and honestly, a man of really good values. He doesn’t feel threatened by Kimba’s power and success and wants to take the journey with her. He’s really good – a very strong hero but he’s not the star. The absolute star of this show is Kimba. She is a force to be reckoned – a woman who stands in her truth and power and will not back down. She knows what she’s good at. She knows how to move the pieces around the board. You want to make a change, Kimba’s the woman to help you get the job done. I loved her with Ezra, absolutely thought they fit. But I honestly got the feeling that she would have been okay if they really couldn’t get their happily ever after.
Kimba and Ezra’s love isn’t easy. It’s complicated and longstanding and at some points, messy as hell. It’s not perfect but they, nor the readers, need it to be.
Natalya is the author of All The Things I Never Said, a soul-stirring collection of short stories, prose and love letters for the soulful wanderers, the brokenhearted and the hopeless romantics.
You can follow her rantings and occasional sparks of brilliance on Twitter @NatalyaMuncuff.
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