This review can also be found on Dusk Angel Reads

Writing
Okay, this book was quite disappointing to me in many ways. One of which was the lack or world building & explanation around the magic systems. While I wasn’t necessarily confused about the magic, there just wasn’t enough of it! We were only told the bear minimum of what it can do, not how or why or any background. Again for the world building, there was barely any! I feel like I don’t know any background about the world, the magic, the war or anything really. The book was quite fast paced but I think that was part of it’s downfall as there was never slow points to be able to explain anything.

This book felt very centred around the characters which meant the plot felt very lacking. However, even though it felt more character driven the characters were very lacking and under developed as well.

I also want to talk on the fact that this book was advertised a ‘villain romance’ but this slightly spoilery, so skip to the Plot section if you don’t want spoilers.
I honestly don’t see this as a villain romance. Nadya falls into Mal’s group SO quickly. There was inner turmoil because of what he was, throughout but she never really acted on that! She just accepted him, trusted him and fell for him so quickly! Even as a reader, he didn’t feel like a villain for 80% of the book. He was a little questionable but it all seemed genuine until the very end when he betrayed her. So yeah, I really don’t think this is even a villain romance. It’s just a romance but one character turned out to be an ass…

Plot
The plot of this book was kinda all over the place & there wasn’t really a big ending like was expected. The whole book felt like it was building to something. I was waiting for Nadya to have her big powerful moment but it never happened. It all just kinda feel flat in the end.

Characters
This book follows Multi POV between Nadya (Nadezhda) & Serefin. There is also one major side character, Mal (Malachiasz).

The only character I enjoyed was Serefin. He was a kinda mysterious character and we were left guessing whether he was the bad or good guy throughout. Even though he was one of the POVs the main focus seemed to be on Nadya, which is mostly where the plot takes place. So his POV points were lacking a little when it came to plot but I still enjoyed reading from him. He felt the most developed out of the characters.

As for both Nadya & Mal, they were both very flat one dimensional characters. Nadya was built up to be a kinda ‘chosen one’ character but that never amounted to anything. While her POV was where the action was, I didn’t like reading from her POV. She was a bland character & very contradictory of herself all the time! Thoughts would be one thing but actions would be the opposite. Neither Nadya or Mal developed at all throughout the book, they felt like the same boring characters all the way through & I didn’t care for either of them. Which made me care less about what happened to them in the plot..

Overall
This book was just disappointing in so many aspects! I started out by reading this physically but then swapped to the audiobook. Which I will say was quite well done. I definitely prefer the audiobook for this one. The 2 voice actors that play Nadya & Serefin brought the characters to life a bit more than they actually felt in the book. I am still curious about book 2 of this book, mainly for Serefin and his story but I probably won’t pick it up unless I can grab the audiobook.