3.5 stars

WARNING: This review will have spoilers. Unspecific spoilers, but spoilers nonetheless.

So, this book was marketed as a gender-swapped retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, which I happen to have recently read. However, if you go into this expecting The Count of Monte Cristo, you're going to be sorely disappointed. You can clearly see it was inspired by TCoMC, but a retelling? Not even close.

The storyline begins, and you can immediately spot the similarities to TCoMC, though, as the book progresses, those melt away, and it deviates substantially. However, I didn't actually have a problem with that. My problem was with our heroine, Amaya, in comparison to the infamous Count of Dumas' novel.

I liked Amaya. She was interesting, and although she did share some characteristics with the cookie cutter "typical YA heroine" (think Clary from The Mortal Instruments), that didn't bother me. Sim wrote her uniquely enough that I didn't find her annoying, and I was rooting for her the whole book. My biggest issue with this book, and with Amaya, was her lack of control over the revenge plot.

Since this book was marketed as TCoMC, while I read it I mentally compared it to TCoMC, and obviously I compared Amaya to the Count. In TCoMC, the Count was shown as brilliant, cool, and collected, a master at acting and the art of deception. He was getting revenge on those that wronged him, and he was doing it his way. He was in charge of everyone, he was controlling everything, and that's part of what makes him such a strong character. He's the puppet master, and that's part of TCoMC is so appealing.

Amaya wasn't the Count at all. The people that were helping her enact revenge weren't under her command. They weren't working for her. It wasn't even Amaya's revenge plot. When Amaya got the chance to kill someone that had wronged her, to get her revenge, one of her crew stopped her by killing the person instead. No one would have dared do that to the Count. But they did it to the Countess, because Amaya wasn't in charge. Ultimately, that made her a weaker character, and I was disappointed by that. This can't be considered a gender-swapped TCoMC because Amaya was very much not the Count. One of the big reveals in the book is that she was being played, which wasn't very surprising, because Amaya held so little control over everything. It was clear from the start she wasn't the puppet master. She was just another puppet. 

One thing I really liked about this book was the casual queerness. It's implied that almost everyone in this book is LGBTQ in some way, which I found very refreshing. It caused me to question some of my own internalized thoughts about queer representation in media. For example, early on in the book I found myself thinking, "Oh, this author is trying really hard to be woke." But then I realized, why did I even think that in the first place? I'll probably think about that aspect of this book a lot. 

Overall, I think I was a little to kind with my rating, but I really did enjoy this book, so 3.5 stars it is. The actual writing was a little bland, and it was also surprisingly rough at the beginning. The worldbuilding was interesting (and probably better than the actual writing), but I'm still a little confused about it. It needed to be touched on in more detail. The queer and POC representation was great. However, this wasn't The Count of Monte Cristo, and I think comparing it to that novel is a disservice to what Scavenge The Stars is: a fantasy novel about loyalty, morality, and revenge.