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

I was unimpressed with this first as a fantasy novel, and then as a structured novel over all. I made notes as I read specifically to not forget to bring up any here.

My first complaint is the way the plot unfolds. We are introduced to our protagonist as she moves in to make a kill. She's portrayed as some kind of assassin/revenge killer, this would be a great opening except that's all it is: an opening. This is never returned to, are there really no consequences to these actions? And from there, various plot point jumps are made with no explanation. For instance, discovering Tarrish in one night - only to be across the country (?) in the capital to enter some sort of royal selection process which apparently is a huge deal and not even alluded to until over 30% through. Some plot points clearly needed to happen to move the story along, but using "a strange pull" that has no follow up explanation is not a particularly strong device. 

Continuing from my previous point, there is no explanation to the geography of this world - the Forbidden Forest receives a lot of page time towards the start, only to have no significance whatsoever. Her uncle's estate is described as being from the far westerly lands, but at no point is there any extended travel. 

Then some of my complaints get more specific: I personally don't know how to feel about seeing the words "hype" or "landfill" in my fantasy books, but perhaps that's me relying on a more specific register. I did feel that it took away a little from the reading experience though. 

Was not impressed with the (minimal) spicy scenes in this. With all the love in the world, I have read better fanfiction - it was not in keeping with the style of the rest of the novel, our protagonist's character, and I don't feel it added to the novel. Linked to this is the cursed description of her assaulter's penis (!) right at the start of the novel, and the repeated descriptions or references to the protagonist's breasts. Was not at all convinced.

Lastly, the set-up of our love triangle-ish plotline was also not convincing. The prince kisses her after she has just been throwing her guts up, and then the guard kisses her to shock her out of a panic attack that she's having because of how she's been touched by another man - I refuse to believe that is what we want to be reading. I also feel that at that point in the story, I hadn't even realised we were portraying the guard as a love interest, so that was quite a jump!

I feel I've been really critical of this novel but I was raising my eyebrows in disbelief at every page. Clearly there is a spark of an idea here, which is lovely, but this was not a well-executed story.