Title: Aveline
Author: Lizzy Ford
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Expected Date of Publication: 19th September, 2016
Page Count: 254 pages (paperback)
Synopsis: (from Goodreads)
Seventeen year old assassin-in-training, Aveline, is ready to die rather than submit to her fate working in a brothel to repay her late father’s debts. On the night she tries to end her life, a stranger stops her and offers a proposition: a clean slate, in exchange for her agreement to become the guardian of a young woman she has never met. Leery of the assignment and the man behind it, Aveline has no other option but to accept the deal.
Aveline’s suspicion that something is off about the arrangement magnifies when she meets her new ward, Tiana Hanover, the daughter of the most powerful man in Lost Vegas. Expecting a pampered princess with an attitude, Aveline is surprised to discover Tiana is little more than a slave – and harboring a secret the wealthy Hanover’s cannot risk being revealed in two months, on Tiana’s eighteenth birthday.
Determined to keep the Hanover girl alive, Aveline must learn how to protect Tiana from the other Hanover’s or wind up dead alongside her ward.
I really wanted to like this one. Judging by the glowing reviews on Goodreads, this appealed to several other readers, but alas, I was not one of them. 
The synopsis sounds fantastic – I love strong female protagonists, I love assassins, I love female friendship or mentor/protegee relationships. And I will say that the action scenes were a high point in this novel. But I found the title character so exasperating that it made this book a struggle to get through!
dreamingofcats 