I recieved an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've been putting off writing this review for an age, simply because I really have very little to say about this book. The friends who chatted with me while I was reading it have been regaled with my litany of personal problems with this book- an inability to connect with the characters, an irritation with the worldbuilding that stands up to zero scrutiny (HOW do the magical council not have any non-magical task forces for fugitives hiding away from ley lines?), and a general lack of investment in the plot, but I think those problems are, as I said, personal. To me this felt stiflingly generic and bland, but there are other people that fell head over heels for these characters. I was really excited to see a nonbinary Korean character as a romantic lead, and I really wanted to be invested in the two leads' dynamic, if nothing else, but I was simply so, so bored reading Spell Bound. I would have DNF'd it if I hadn't commited to reviewing it.

In short, I couldn't personally recommend this, and while I do think it's a bit lacklustre in terms of generic prose and awkward pacing, I don't think there's anything egregious about it, so I wouldn't exactly warn someone away- and that's why it's not one-star... But I can honestly say that it did absolutely nothing for me.