Disclaimer: I received this book from KidLitExchange and Bloomsbury. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Rating: 3/5

Genre: YA Fantasy?

Recommended Age: 15+ (violence, assault, murder, cult like behavior, creepy kids, and confusion)

Pages: 432

Author Website

Amazon Link

Synopsis: Every Christmas, Wren is chased through the woods near her isolated village by her family's enemies—the Judges—and there’s nothing that she can do to stop it. Once her people, the Augurs, controlled a powerful magic. But now that power lies with the Judges, who are set on destroying her kind for good.

In a desperate bid to save her family, Wren takes a dangerous undercover assignment—as an intern to an influential Judge named Cassa Harkness. Cassa has spent her life researching a transformative spell, which could bring the war between the factions to its absolute end. Caught in a web of deceit, Wren must decide whether or not to gamble on the spell and seal the Augurs’ fate.

Okay this book is strange and I’m not sure if it’s in a good way. For the sake of order I will say what I liked about it first. I liked that it’s strange and interesting. I feel this will be a big selling point of the book and that maybe there will be people who will understand this book and explain it to me.

However, I really didn’t like this book. Nothing was explained until about halfway through the book and even then not all of my questions were answered. The world building was nonexistent and I’m not even sure if this book is a fantasy, a contemporary, a dystopian, high fantasy, etc. The book tended to repeat itself… A LOT. The book was just confusing and frustrating to me. The characters weren’t developed at all and when I got to the end I still struggled to remember who was who. And the book was weirdly paced. While I felt that the book happened pretty fast, the book was also really slow?? I’m so confused by the book and I’m confused on how to even talk about it.

Verdict: If you’ve read this book please explain it to me!