2.5 out of 5 stars
*reluctant groan and unsure expression*
I really wanted to love this book! And it wasn't horrible but...it was nothing special. A fairly predictable plot with some cool magic. I normally read books of this size in one or two days but I struggled to read this within 4 days with help from the audiobook.

The main girl was infuriatingly stupid. She blames herself the entire book which fuels her rage and desire for revenge despite it being pretty obvious that she isn't sure exactly what happened. Someone will say on page 100 "it wasn't your fault" and then she does that annoying inner monologue that everything is her fault by essentially just being alive...and then on page 102 she'll finally switch to "oh, it wasn't all my fault."

The inner monologue and information are almost painfully repetitive. Yes, we've established that you can travel via the canals and no one will know. You don't need to include that EVERY DAMN TIME you're going to use the canals! It seemed like it could've been edited a bit more to help with that.

If the male lead, Less, wasn't in the book...I don't know that I would've finished it. The main girl does a lot of things that I just *head shake, exhales and shrug* and muttered "you're so stupid. Why are you doing this?" and then Less would come in and speak logically.

I'm not even remotely a spiritual person so the aspect of "you're my enemy because you believe in another god" was pretty unappealing to me (and it kinda the same logic that got our world in this geopolitical chaos that you see on the news).

I don't know that I'll read the sequel--if I do, it'll be borrowed from the library. This cover and the sequels are beautiful but the book is VERY heavy into romance while betrayal and backstabbing and such are kind of an afterthought.