Firstly, thank you to R&R for the copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Reading the synopsis of this book made me super excited to read it. I dont normally shy away from books that are 500 pages+. While this book had a great story line and the idea that it was built around was great, I felt that it was stretched out when it could've been a 300 pages book. I did enjoy the dialogue, the comedy between the characters and the insight into the lore and the setting (the castle, the places and environment building was just beautiful).

The other thing that made me give this book a three star is the fact that Gateley writes a beautiful grieving process about the grandmother and this came at a time when I'd lost my own grandmother, so this was very therapeutic and healing. I truly enjoyed navigating this experience with Julia and healing how I feel about my own grief.

However, due to the length, it took me a long time to get through the book and I felt I was forcing myself to read through it. I had to pause a few times in order to not DNF the book because it was going VERY slowly. Because of this, I was unable to finish this book in time to read the second book and decided that I'd leave the second book and read it before the third book comes out.