Two separated sisters, one raised to be a queen and the other raised to be a monster, finally come together after seven years and the mysterious death of their mother. The story was advertised as being “ Three Dark Crows meets Wicked Saints in this queer #ownvoices retelling of “The Firebird”, a Russian Folktale. The story follows twin sisters Izaveta ad Asya. Izaveta is raised to be manipulative, paranoid, and above all a future queen while Asya has been raised to be the next Firebird, a mythical creature with vast amounts of power. Heres the thing, they are two ends of the spectrum, Izaveta being cold and suspicious of everyone and using lies to get what she wants, while Asya is soft to a fault, naive, and too trusting, to the point where she can barely even do her job as the next Firebird. There is friction between both sisters as they learn to adjust to the new sibling in front of them, as so much time has passed and so much is at stake. If Izaveta cannot properly handle the murder of her mother and taking over the kingdom she will lose it all, while if Asya cannot learn to do her job as the next Firebird everything will come down in flames and chaos will follow. Throw in a f/f enemies to lovers storyline and a cute but snarky scholar, and here we have this story. The overall plot was interesting with the court intrigue and the deceptions, I actually found Iza’s plotline to be interesting, more so than Asya’s. The story ends on a cliffhanger and it is confirmed there are more books coming in this series, so I can’t wait to see what happens next!


*Thank you Netgalley and Inkyard Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*