Of course the synopsis of this immediately grabbed my attention. I mean having to sacrifice your first love to save your family, wow. What a horrible thing for a young girl to have to do. This book lived up to every expectation I had for it. And it surpassed what I had even though I would be reading. The amount of family lore and the mythology of this magical world was so detailed and had so much depth, that I feel I could read more books because there is still so much more to discover. Not only about Voya’s immediate family that she lives with, but also about all the other witch families we meet in this story. Which is one reason the surprise of seeing there is supposed to be a sequel was a very happy surprise for me!

Now, this is an almost 500 page book. And when I first picked it up to get started, I was thinking that could be an issue. But it wasn’t. At all. This book had me turning the pages as fast as I could to find out what would happen next, as well as to learn more about this family and their ancestors. All of the characters had so much to them that I wanted to learn more and see what would happen to them. I will admit to guessing a few things before they happened, but in the end there were even some twists and turns that I did not see coming! Things that I was shocked like Voya, and could see how much she was beating herself up for making the choices she did, even though she’d spent as much time as she could trying to make sure her decision was the best she could do out of all the options! That’s why the end took me a bit to understand exactly what the gift was, but once I did, it was perfect. It wrapped up what all Voya had been dealing with throughout the story.

I really did love this story a lot. I can’t wait to share this one with the students at my new school. And I wish I was still working at the bookstore so that I could have this as my staff recommendation! Maybe they’ll let me come in and do a staff rec for old times sake?

One teeny thing that bothered me, and I’ve mentioned it with other books set in the future or dystopian worlds, is when they use a word for slang. In this it was “hack”. Like instead of the f word or other curse words, they’d say hacking. It was a little annoying because that word really has a meaning that is used a lot.

But to make up for that teeny tiny issue I had, was all the delicious sounding food that was discussed! Real food, things I had to Google, and make a list to get out and try. I must find either a Trinidadian or Caribbean restaurant or festival of some sort to try things like kurma sticks, or bake bread, just to name a few.

Review first posted on Lisa Loves Literature.