Read for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon - Ancient Runes: read a book with a heart on the cover (see my O.W.L.s TBR video here)

I... am so conflicted about this. It was a very entertaining read, not perfect by any means, but definitely a lot of fun. My overall enjoyment of The Paper Magician made me want to give it 4 stars when I was getting close to the end. But then I actually got the end and read what was in the fortuity box, thus discovering that Ceony and Emery are at some point going to actually enter a relationship together, and immediately wanted to lower my rating to a 2 at the most

Why oh why did this have to have romance in it

If this was just a case of Ceony having a crush on her mentor, that's fine. People get crushes on their teachers all the time. I myself had a huge crush on my 1st grade teacher. It happens, it's normal, no big deal

What IS a big deal is when said teacher reciprocates those feelings. I don't care that Ceony is of legal age, I don't even really care about the gigantic age gap. What I do care about is the huge power imbalance that these two being in love would bring forth. A student/teacher relationship is NEVER acceptable, and yet that is the turn that this book took. Big yikes.

I feel like I wouldn't have minded the romance if Ceony had been his student for a while, had a crush on him the whole time, and then several years after her apprenticeship was done they got together. If that's how the next books play out then I'm fine, but I have a feeling that's not going to be the case

Anyways, onto other things

The plot was decent. The first half was pretty solid, but by the time we got to the third chamber in the heart I was tired of it. It got a little repetitive and didn't feel like it had much purpose to it. It was also a little too convenient that Ceony just HAPPENED to make a guess how to get out of the heart and it was right. I wanted there to be more struggle, more angst, more DRAMA. But everything felt a little too easy. I was never really worried that any of the characters weren't going to make it, which made reading the whole middle feel kinda boring. I feel like I could have skipped the whole part inside the heart and gone right to the end, and not feel like I missed much

I do really like the characters though, mainly Emery. Ceony is ok, I liked her for the most part even if she was a bit bland. But Emery is fantastic, I really enjoyed his character. I hope he isn't near dead in the next books lmfao

Overall, not bad, not good either, a bit problematic but I will continue on with this series