A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Random House Children’s/Delacorte Press for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is a phenomenal addition to the romantasy genre that will keep you guessing about who to trust until the very end. (And will also make you never trust your mirror again - that is, if you ever did in the first place.)

I had to finish this novel in one sitting, as once I started reading I could not stop.

I’ve always found that mirrors made me anxious, and after a certain point at night I would never look into them - as I was terrified that my reflection would do something that I myself wasn’t doing.

This novel is what happens when that exact scenario is something that can, and will, happen.

Our main character Ying is soon to be married to the crown prince, but the only problem is - she’s been locked in her room the entire time she’s been there, and every time she meets with him he’s cruel and cold to her. And if that’s not enough, suddenly every reflection she sees seems to be showing her things that only she notices. Until finally, it all comes to a head and she rips away the barrier between her world, and the mirror world.

Here, Ying meets the Mirror Prince - the complete opposite to the crown prince in her world. Kind and loving, the Mirror Prince is the love that Ying has always dreamed of - and yet, she can’t stay in this world forever. Things are happening, war is on the horizon, and soon lines are drawn in the sand between friends and foes.

Keshe Chow has both incredible worldbuilding and characterization in her debut novel, and at no point did I feel bored or felt like something didn’t make sense.

Never once did I feel like yelling at my book because the main character did something I felt was stupid, or obviously the wrong decision. Ying is thrust into this strange world of mirrors, and neither her, nor the reader, is ever certain of who she can really trust. She makes the best decisions she can with the very limited information she has, and even when everything comes crashing down around her - I felt like she did the best she could have done.

I also never once felt that the worldbuilding in this novel was done poorly or without care. As Ying is learning about the dynamics of the mirror world as compared to the “real” world, so is the reader. Whenever I had a question about how something worked - so did Ying, and so we essentially learned the ropes of this reality together.

This novel also gets really intense at multiple times, and there is one scene in particular that shocked me to my core and EXTREMELY raised the stakes. (I might have yelled at the author for this scene in discord, but trust me - it’s worth it.) While much of the beginning of this novel feels like much of the danger will bypass the main character - the tension slowly rises until you can't be certain about who will survive until the end.

I would describe this book as perfect for fans of Daughter of the Moon Goddess, The Scarlet Alchemist, and Song of Silver, Flame Like Night and would highly encourage anyone who is a fan of high-stakes romantasy to check it out. The romance is fantastic, the worldbuilding is fascinating, and the characters are believable and human.