Thank you to NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

I was pleasantly surprised by this one! Although it didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking, the almost dystopian opening setting was completely unexpected and added a really interesting layer to the story.
Instead of being immediately thrust into a fantastical world, we first spend some time in the White House - and the descriptions of the people waiting outside the gates to be healed definitely had an apocalypse-style feel to me. As we continued from this into the fantasy aspects, I was cautious at first. We were introduced to two princes right off the bat and I had a horrible feeling we were setting up for a 'vying for her love' situation. Once I realised that wasn't the direction this book was going to head in, I was able to relax and actually found that the majority of these characters had some real depth to them.
One love-hate aspect of this novel for me was all the cultural references. I loved Riel's general confusion and demonstration of how fluency in a language doesn't equal full understanding of a culture, but also so many of the phrases and expressions in here already felt a little forced and dated - as is the nature of internet-based discourse.