The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk by Carissa Broadbent – Review

Published: August 5, 2025

Publisher: Bramble

Series: Crowns of Nyaxia #4

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 638 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3 Stars

Synopsis:
Mische made the ultimate sacrifice to save those she loves – and plunged the world into an eternal night. Now, imprisoned by the gods and obsessed with revenge, Asar is desperate to find her again.

When a goddess offers them a final path to redemption – and back to each other – Asar and Mische embark on an extraordinary mission. Together, they must seize the power of the god of death so Asar may do the ascend to true divinity.

Their journey will take them through mortal and immortal realms, alongside both old friends and ruthless enemies. But as the underworld teeters on the brink of collapse and the gods prepare for a war, Asar and Mische must decide what they are willing to sacrifice for the power to defy death. In a game of vengeful gods and ancient betrayals, there are some debts that even love may not be able to repay.

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Generally speaking, I love a good romantasy, especially one from Carissa Broadbent… but you know what? I really struggled to get invested in The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk. I thought The Songbird and the Heart of Stone was good and it ended with enough of a bang that I was looking forward to the sequel. The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk was tough to get through and I attribute a large part of that to hating the narration for Asar, who has his own POV chapters now. It was far too growly and I couldn’t take it seriously. I eventually switched from the audiobook to the ebook in an effort to power my way through and even then, it took me until around the halfway point to feel some real investment in the story.

Now, let’s back up a bit and talk about the general plot. This picks up with Mische newly dead and finding her ghostly self being helped out by an equally ghostly Vincent. Yes, the very dead Nightborn king is actually helping out Mische because things are unraveling and Mische needs to find Asar so he can stop the destruction of the Veil. Asar is being tortured by the gods of the White Pantheon and he’s being a very stereotypical tough guy. Fortunately his imprisonment doesn’t last long because long imprisonments often get tedious for the reader. There’s only so much torment and overflowing waste buckets I can handle in a story. He yoinks Mische up into the realm of the living, though she herself remains a wraith with a deadly touch, and the pair set off to find three items belonging to Alarus – a mask, his eye, and his heart. 

There are a lot of reasons I should have liked this book more than I did, even at the beginning. Sadly, it just didn’t work for me as well as I hoped it would. Despite all the action, the yearning, and even Luce’s delightful doggy presence, I felt like I was trying to power through right up until the Bloodborn show up. Things started to get truly interesting at that point and I began to feel much more invested. Now, mind you, that’s a lot of book to push through to get to a point where I started enjoying it. The last 40-50% went by in a flash and my overall opinion of this installment was somewhat redeemed. That being said, this is still my least favorite of Carissa Broadbent’s stories to date, though I still have yet to read Six Scorched Roses and Slaying the Vampire Conqueror. I’m definitely planning to check out the first book in the next Crowns of Nyaxia duology, The Lion and the Deathless Dark.