American King by Sierra Simone

I am slightly shocked to say that I really enjoyed American King. It might even be favorite of Sierra Simone’s New Camelot series. 

As the name suggests, Simone’s New Camelot series is a retelling of the King Arthur story. Ash takes the role of Arthur. Greer is Queen Guinevere and Embry is Lancelot. Simone's major twist is that instead of Lancelot and Guinevere having an affair behind Arthur's back, they have a three-way relationship with Arthur. Ash, Embry, and Greer fall in love with each other and fight to make their relationship work. There are plenty of wannabe foils - a crazy cousin who thinks she would make a better wife for Ash, an incestuous coupling, and a kidnapper to name a few. None of these things stop Embry, Greer, and Arthur from coming together multiple times. This wasn't the first book I’ve read about a three-sided romance, but it is the best. Sometimes a threesome really feels like a couple who likes to play with a third on occasion. Here each of relationships – Greer and Ash, Ash and Embry, and Embry and Greer – feels complete and real, as does their relationship as a unit. I like to think of them as an equilateral triangle, each relationship feels equal.

As many will know, this series explores dominant-submissive relationship. Ash can snap his fingers and Greer falls to her knees at his feet. Embry prefers to fight before giving in, but he does always submit too. The submissiveness in the first two books gave me pause. In American King I started to not like it, but accept it. It wasn’t until I got Ash's point of view that I began to understand and appreciate (or like) Ash as a character. He is honorable and caring. That made the intimacy between the three characters that much more steamier and romantic.

American King is the end of the trilogy. (There are two novellas that follow but they're about side characters rather than the main three.) The end threw me for a loop. There was a happy ending I didn’t think was going to happen. I was pleasantly and happily surprised.