- Performance: Stella Hunter is the sole reader across six and a half hours of first-person narration, and the credit is the only line on the page touching the recording.
- What it covers: Fated mates, a bargain struck under duress, enemies to lovers, two rival princes, a curse running through a bloodline.
- Feel: Feverish, ornate and deliberately overheated.
- Our call: A solid second course for readers already invested, though nobody has reported back on how it sounds.
Nobody in this publisher's description has a name. Two princes, one born of blood and one of power, a narrator cursed by the stars, and not one proper noun anywhere in the audiobook blurb. You learn that the protagonist is called Adara only by reading what other people wrote underneath it.
The Review
Podium Audio released this in June 2023 as the second entry in Stars and Shadows, and the copy commits hard to a register: my skin is cursed by the stars, my fate damned by desire. A bargain is the engine. The dark prince offers terms that will save his people and the narrator's life, and the cruel and intoxicating male, in the description's own phrase, leaves no choice in the matter. The union is his revenge. The narrator is his sacrifice.
Everything past that point is fated-mates architecture doing its work. He is the narrator's mate. He is tortured by a curse that obliges him to protect his people from his own family. His lies are unforgivable and his touch is not, which the copy puts rather more bluntly than I will. The closing line states the thesis: the narrator holds the key to saving his kingdom, and he alone holds the power to ruin the person telling the story.
Reviews fill in everything the blurb withholds. The protagonist is Adara. The dark prince is Evren, though one reader spells him Evron throughout, and that same reader is the one who has been through the series three times. Another names the machinery outright: enemies to lovers, angst, world building, story lines. None of it appears in the publisher's own paragraph, which prefers atmosphere to information.
Why Listen to A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal
Stella Hunter holds the reading credit for six hours and thirty-five minutes, and that credit is the only thing on this page concerning the recording. Five people wrote at length underneath. They wrote about finishing the first book, about being more than halfway through this one at the time of writing, about a third pass through the series, and about wanting everything else the author has published. Not one of them was listening.
Absence is worth naming here rather than waving through, because first-person romantasy is a performance-dependent form. One voice has to carry an interior monologue for six and a half hours, and then produce two rival princes inside it without the narration ever stepping outside that single point of view. A listener choosing this over the page has nothing to work from except the fact that Podium Audio assigned a single reader to the whole book.
One thing the responses do establish is that the prose runs on a strong physical vocabulary, which cuts both ways once it is spoken. A three-star reader makes the point through deliberate hyperbole: Evren's fingers trailed down Adara's spine three thousand times, and he rubbed his hand across his jaw four thousand three hundred and seventy-six times. Repeated gestures that an eye skims past on the page become tics you cannot unhear once a voice has to say them out loud.
The Caveats
Read the five responses closely and two of them are not about this book. The most recent of them, graded five stars in February 2026, addresses the author directly, reports that every fantasy title of hers this reader has tried was a success, and admits to having read only three of them. This volume, this series and these characters go unmentioned. The other five-star entry, filed in December 2025 under a handle carrying two separate people's names, runs to two sentences and recommends the series rather than the book. The five dates stretch from February 2024 to February 2026, thinly spread across better than two years, which describes a title that keeps finding readers slowly rather than one that arrived to a crowd.
Dissent is the most useful material on the page, and it arrives with a caveat attached to it. The three-star reader states plainly that the review was written more than halfway through rather than after finishing, which makes it a progress report. The complaint is repetition: the same phrases, the same gestures and the same dialogue beats recycled across both leads. That entry then stops dead partway through a sentence, so its verdict never actually arrives at all.
Rereading changes a verdict in a way worth watching. The four-star reader on a third pass through the series comes back after the author's later work and finds Evron and Adara to be great characters who could stand more depth, concluding that Holly hadn't really hit her stride yet on character and world building. That is a rare thing to find in a review column: somebody grading a book against the writer it was leading toward rather than against the shelf around it.
Placement matters more than usual here. This is the second volume of Stars and Shadows, and every reviewer treats it as such, recommending the series rather than the title and reaching back to the first book for context. Nothing on the record flags it as a continuation beyond a series number, so anyone arriving cold at six and a half hours of established mate bond and unforgivable betrayal will be missing the entire setup.
Heat level is the last thing to calibrate. The description deals in wicked touch, sin and desire, and one reviewer refers with open approval to Evren's signature dirty mouth. No content label appears anywhere on the record, so take the copy at its word: this is written warm, and a listener is expected to have turned up for that.
The Right Listener for A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal
Stay with the series if you finished the first volume and want the bargain paid off, because this is where the union, the revenge and the sacrifice all get transacted. It suits readers who come for fated mates, enemies to lovers, morally compromised princes and a protagonist locked into an arrangement nobody offered a way out of. Six and a half hours is a manageable second course rather than a full meal.
Hold off if you have not heard the opening volume, and hold off again if repetition in prose grates on you, since the sharpest reader on this page names exactly that and illustrates it twice. Anyone who wants to know how a narrator sounds before committing will find nothing to go on. Series readers who already trust this author, though, are precisely the audience this whole page describes.
Questions Listeners Ask
Do I need the first book before this audiobook?
Almost certainly. This is volume two of Stars and Shadows, the mate bond and the betrayal are already established when it opens, and every reviewer recommends the series rather than this installment on its own. One of them explicitly describes finishing the opening book before starting here.
Who narrates the audiobook, and what do listeners say about it?
Stella Hunter reads all six hours and thirty-five minutes. Nobody has commented on the performance. Every written response describes reading or rereading the text, including one written midway through and one on a third pass, so the credit line is the only information available about the recording.
How explicit does it get?
Warm, on the available evidence. The description trades in cursed skin, sin and a touch described as wicked, and one reviewer approvingly mentions the male lead's signature dirty mouth. No content rating appears on the record, so calibrate from the publisher's own vocabulary rather than from a label.
