It's a pretty common complain that the second book in a trilogy feels like filler. I have to say, I've never encountered a trilogy where the entire first book feels like filler. With brief interludes from the present, Tea narrates her entire bone witch story from reviving her dead brother to being taken to the big city where she can become an asha (which is basically a geisha but with magic) and like, learning to dance and shit.

You never get a good reason for what Tea wants, why she is narrating her entire story to this unnamed character, or anything else for that matter. The entire book is so incomprehensibly boring I'm truly proud of myself for finishing it. The world building is lackluster, there is zero character development, and overall it feels like someone's high school nanowrimo story vomited up in one draft with no editing.

Spoiler

I also rolled my eyes so hard I was nearly blinded when I found out that Tea actually fell in love with Kalen, not Kance, whom she'd been mooning over the whole book, and he's the one she resurrects at the end. You can't just say "enemies to lovers" and make it happen, you actually need to show it. JFC.

I literally have nothing nice to say.