Alrighty, folks. Let's do this thing.

I really, really thought I was going to like this book. And for the first act of the story, which took place in Varenia, I did. I enjoyed the bond between Zadie and Nor, I thought that their family dynamic was interesting, and the world building of Varenia was interesting. If I was rating the book based just on that first section, it would have probably been a four star read. However, the book continued.

After Nor is sent in her sister's place to the castle, the book unfortunately took a turn for the worse, and we are introduced to the two Princes: Ceren and Talin. Both were poorly done in different ways. Nor and Talin had an instalove connection that never really developed past that, and Talin as a character didn't exist beyond that. He clearly existed only as a Prince Charming love interest with no personality of his own. Ceren, on the other hand, is the villain of the book, and Rutherford never really struck the right balance between sympathetic and evil to get the morally grey recipe exactly right. Ceren was extremely sympathetic, to the point where his cruelty felt kind of bizarre to me? I was in a constant state of confusion with him, and Talin just annoyed me.

Most of the plot was fine, but not great. However! The last ~30 pages went a little bit bonkers. I suspect this was because Rutherford was scrambling to complete a story in one book which she's stated was meant to be a duology. There was sort of an information dump of plot twists that came out of nowhere and felt extremely abrupt. This same problem led to there being several plot points that just never went anywhere. I'm sure they would have become important in the second book, but since this book was sold as a standalone, I'm assuming there won't be a second book, and I feel that some of that content should have been removed.

All in all, I can see where this book was going, and how it could have been really good. The execution just didn't do it for me.

ARC provided via NetGalley