10 Books You May Have Missed This Summer

The Crown’s Game, Evelyn Skye, cover crop. Image via publisher Balzer + Bray

5. The Crown’s Game

We can’t quite call this a historical romance, because it’s an alternate history fantasy romance from the YA genre. Evelyn Skye’s The Crown’s Game teems with beautiful descriptions and a pretty good love triangle.

Set in an Imperial Russia similar to but not exactly like the one you can find in history books, Vika Andreyeva and Nikolai Karimov share a talent for magic. More accurately, they’re both enchanters, albeit with different gifts. While Vika specializes in the natural elements, Nikolai can create magical, mechanical wonders. As the only two enchanters in Russia, they must compete to become the only enchanter in Russia as part of the Crown’s Game, and the tsar’s magical right-hand man (or woman, should Vika win).

Shame about that love triangle that looms over them, right? Especially since one corner happens to be the heir to the throne and Nikolai’s closest friend in the world…

Fellow YA author Sabaa Tahir (An Ember in the Ashes) has given it a full five stars on Goodreads, and readers praise its worldbuilding. If you’ve read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, you’ll feel right at home with this one, just on a YA scale and set in Russia instead.

Balzer + Bray; hardcover, 416 pages.

Next: 4. Marrying Winterborne