The King's Beloved

by Ess McKinney

The King's Beloved is a queer biblical retelling of the love story between David and Jonathan. It follows them throughout their life together, covering known biblical events and the moments between.

"If you cannot have faith in divine will then have faith in us.”

David has been anointed as the next king of Israel. Yet, despite knowing that he is destined to take the throne, he still finds himself drawn to King Saul's eldest son, Prince Jonathan.

Jonathan understood from the moment he met David that the shepherd was destined for great things. But he
had not understood how dangerous greatness could be.

312 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 17, 2024

Reviews

[Saffie Kaplan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 rounding down

I had a much longer review written but Goodreads ate it so I may or may not come back and write more later. Ultimately, this was a fine book on its own, but a poor retelling of the David/Jonathan story. So many unnecessary non-canonical events were added to the plot, while simultaneously glossing over most of the canonical events that make the original story so incredible. Just not a good utilization of the canon material.

Also, I was really hoping the sex scenes would redeem the book, but then the author decided not to use a single explicit word for bodily parts or functions which kind of ruined all the sex scenes, even when they could have otherwise been decent. It’s 2025, just say cock!

[Carson Rodke · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I stumbled upon the series on TikTok, and I was intrigued by the concept of queer biblical retellings. However, this amazing concept's execution is more tragic than the story of David and Jonathan. The pacing is so rapid it's almost supersonic, the characters are flat with little motivation, and there is no world building or detail within the story. I would not even know what the characters looked like if not for the cover art. Truly the only time the story is moderately paced is in the poorly written smut scenes. Conversations meant to shape the characters and their motivations are condensed into single paragraphs, while coitus is drawn out in vague verbiage. The text is also full of weird spacing errors, and though I would expect to find a couple within an independently published text, there are so many that it becomes jarring.

I'm sorry. It gives me no pleasure to say all of this. I really hope the author goes back and writes the story again with some thought. Flesh out the characters. Write historically accurate dialogue. Provide setting descriptions. This is such an awesome concept, it just needs a lot of help. I hope to read a revised version of this someday.

[Storm Alexander · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very quick read. finished in under 5 hours and i am by no means a speed reader. the pages are printed in large text with wide margins, meaning there is little content-per-page. this would be fine if the book weren’t so short.

the pacing is very quick, paced like someone’s first decent fan fiction, free of spelling errors but lacking in skill. There is not much introduction to romance, the characters are in love from page one. the constant back-and-forth felt tiring. not to mention the side characters, who feel like an afterthought and are left unresolved. there is little plot outside the relationship and the Big Bad. any conflict outside of the main conflict is resolved within a (very short) page or two.

if you’re looking for a good forbidden love novel, search elsewhere. i’ve honestly read better romance online for free than this, with much more content (shout out to AO3). It was an interesting concept, but the story was not compelling for me in the slightest.

[Sam Redwine · Rating 5 out of 5]

currently reading it, already love it, can tell that it’s gonna make me cry

[Halloween Tarver · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel a bit bad rating this book only a 2.5 because it's clearly a work of passion from an author with potential. Unfortunately, the pacing fell completely flat for much of the book. Most of the time, it felt much, much too fast; although, occasionally, it felt as though the book meandered doing nothing. I really liked the characterization, but I would have liked to see more time spent on individual relationships (David & Jonathan, Jonathan & his siblings, etc. etc.). The book is also just full of plot holes. If you had no knowledge of the Bible story it's based on you may be a bit lost. Overall, I actually might like to see more from this author someday since I could feel their passion through the page, but this book feels somewhat rushed and it just doesn't hit as hard as I would have liked. This may be a bit nitpicky, but it also bothered me from the moment I picked up the book that the cover shows both David and Jonathan as being explicitly white (blonde and ginger hair and all), the story would be set in the middle east at a time when both almost certainly would have been darker in both complection and hair color; this bothers me because the author advertises themselves as valuing diversity and inclusion, and yet they whitewash the book for literally no reason, it comes across as frankly disingenuous.