You know how some people complain that Tolkin waxes poetic about trees waaaay too often? Or GRR Martin is obsessed with feasts? THIS BOOK is OBSESSED with DRESSES!!! Almost the entire book is descriptions of fabrics, wraps, accessories... Yes there is a language of symbols going on here, but it's WAY TOO MANY lists of outfits, or scenes of someone buying an outfit, commissioning an outfit, changing their outfit.... And the simple act of day-to-day getting fitted read more like a teenager's diary than a BOOK! Who wants that?!

With what remains after you yada yada over clothing descriptions... the book felt oddly stilted. Every character's dialogue is just an info dump, every conversation expositional. They explain the world they live in, instead of having genuine conversations. And the descriptions were full of so many proper nouns in another language (I THINK a made up language?), with no context clues as to what those words MEANT, that whole passages were just unintelligible.

But, beyond excessive makeovers, or info shoe-horned into unnatural dialogue, THE CARDINAL SIN is that this book BORED me. It bored me to tears! I fell asleep multiple times! For all the fun that should have been had with heart-sharing and necromancy, this book was just a run of the mill origina story. Here's a girl who thought she was average, but turns out she harbors a magical taboo, and has to go to secret magic school! There's the Mean Girl who makes magic school unfun. There's the stuffy old mentor who's a hard@$$ but will mold our hero well. There's the love triangle, the royalty she falls for first and the brooding bodyguard who will be her actual love. There's the dying maternal figure. There's the enemy she defeats, captures, and will inevitably go to for a fresh perspective. Snooooore. I have seen ALL of these tropes so many times before. But THIS book seemed to be on a quest to use every stinkin' trope! Trope Bingo!

If you need a sleep aid, read this book. Otherwise, skip.

A paint-by-numbers YA fantasy without banter, sizzle,