read for OWLs Magical Readathon 2019: Astronomy, 'star' in the title

Hm. This book is quite the little mystery to me. The premise sold me instantly: a princess with a secret magical ability goes to the country where she will be married to the prince, and falls in love with the prince's wild sister. Yes, I'm sold. And this book delivers on the romance! Mare and Denna's love story is so incredibly sweet. We get to witness their rocky start, their budding friendship, and finally a devastatingly passionate romance. The author crafted the love story so well, building with just the right amount of tension. Also the problem with their love is never that they are both girls. In fact there seems to be no problem with any sexualities in this book which is excellent. Fantasy worlds don't need to carry our world's prejudices with them. Plus, it's own voices as Coulthurst herself is a lesbian.

However when you look past the romance... this book does not hold up. The world and magical system is severely underdeveloped. The different kingdoms never feel fully established so the tensions amongst them felt flat. Sure I can understand that the characters are ignorant about magic since it's outlawed, but the political situations? The leads are members of the royal family, there's no way they don't know more about diplomatic relations.

Furthermore the writing was very juvenile and overly simplistic. I mean honestly it read more like a middle grade novel despite that there are some more mature moments. The plot just has so many convenient moments for each point in the mystery. The difficulty was less about finding information then getting the "Directorate" to believe what Denna and Mare discovered.

Mare is the princess! Why doesn't she just become a spy/information gatherer officially? She clearly understands the network of spies like... WAAAY too well.

I just found myself not caring at all about the actual plot. All I wanted was more of the romance, which means two thirds of the book just felt extremely meh. Plus the twist at the end... well it was deeply predictable.

Outside of Denna and Mare, none of the characters are given any development. And even getting into their characters was a bit rough. Mare is your classic "i don't wanna be a princess I want freeeeeedom" even though she basically does whatever she wants and seems to suffer zero consequences for her actions. Denna has actual stakes so it made Mare's issues just feel childish. She also thinks everyone in the kingdom is an idiot when what this kingdom really needed was for people to actually listen to one another. Oh and this is a tiny detail that drove me nuts:

After the king dies Denna is so insistent about "i would never hurt anyone" that she repeats is so often. But like... have we forgotten that she killed the assassin? Girl you literally have already killed someone. That and her storyline of "conceal, don't feel" about her magic just... what did she and her family think was going to happen? Of course pretending it doesn't exist won't solve the problem for fuck's sake

I was intrigued by the ending and curious about what happens next (I'm really interested about the Zumordan queen if we get to meet her), but honestly not enough to pick it up unless I hear that writing has drastically improved.

I think I'm spoiled by my recent reread of [b:The Queen of Attolia|40158|The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #2)|Megan Whalen Turner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1293505506s/40158.jpg|1124161] which handles complicated politics SO WELL. Every other YA author has to take a close study of the Queen's Thief series.