Review: Peerless

Overview

Review

Strengths

• Both characters are equally matched, neither of them able to consistently over the other despite their different strengths.
• Beautiful rivals-to-lovers progression, from torture at first sight to a willingness to die and sacrifice everything for each other.
• Really fun political scheming and mystery solving.

Flaws

• This book is as flawless as Feng Xiao's peerless good looks.

This is a ridiculously fun ride with political plotting & mystery solving as a backdrop to two amoral, competent, and snarky characters who fall in love while scheming endlessly against each other. Do you love undercover fake dating/fake marriage/fake make-outs and similar shenanigans? Then you'll have a blast with this book.

I love that while Cui Buqu is physically frail, he's still incredibly powerful and intelligent, and go head-to-head with Feng Xiao, who's an excellent fighter. They both succeed and fail in equal measures when they scheme against each other, and they eventually care for and end up rescuing each other as well. The equal power dynamics and give-and-take of this relationship is by far one of the best I've read in a long time.

Without spoiling the book, I genuinely list the confession scene between them the best I've read so far. It's so in-character and uniquely them and comes at a very logical point after a lot of build-up.

I highly recommend this book for people interested in a rivals-to-lovers dynamic, ruthless & competent main characters, and mystery adventures.