I was so excited to read this book! The back cover mentioned magic; I love fantasy books. But right when I started reading this book, I noticed that the writing is flowery and was full of so many cliches. I know some books have cliches, but this had more than one on every page. For example, “Shock strung my bones at hard angles. My heart shuddered against my ribs.” and My ribs clenched as her cool, soft hand circled my wrist” Whateven. These are everywhere in the story. The main character could be anyone! She has no personality at all. Selene had a pretty interesting world set up, but because this is told in the first person I don’t understand any of the other characters and since the protagonist is so stubborn and just gets angry at everyone there are no clear rules to society. So when there was the revelation that this snarky girl is Sunder’s sister, it’s like “Who cares?”There is way more overly descriptive prose than actual plot in this book. It's almost like she just wanted to hide the fact that nothing happens in this book with way too many descriptions. There is a gay character in the book which is cool, but it’s almost like she threw him into the story to have it in the story. This straight up feels like an afterthought. And then if that isn't bad enough, she killed off the only LGBTQ+ character! He was the only character with personality, that pissed me off. At that point, I was only reading the book for him, and she killed him. Also the love interest, Sunder is mildly abusive. EVERY time he and Mirage interact he hurts her wrist. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. Then if that isn't enough after her old bf tries to assassinate the Empress, Sunder whisks her off to his palace in the snow, and then it’s revealed that Mirage is an heir to the Empire. Of course, she is. But only bad boy Sunder knew this. Then, in the end, we find out that the Queen had killed her father so she could take the throne, (HELLO HAMLET). Mirage fights with the queen and somehow beats her with her magic powers of illusion, and she becomes the new queen. This book was all over the place. I honestly couldn't get past the horrible writing and lack of character development, but I did finish the book as part of the OwlCrate readathon. Otherwise, I would have DNFed this book.