TRIGGER WARNING: THIS BOOK HAS ABUSE IN IT.
This book had so much hype around it. I wasn't planning on reading it, but then I got it in an Owlcrate box, and thus, I had to read it. Silly me didn't know that this book was about abuse, there is a warning of it in the first couple of pages, but I usually skip them and go straight into the story. This book is centered around the objectification of women. The plot is pretty much for our main character "you have pretty eyes; you'll be great for the King as a concubine". Even then Lei is being used as a pawn for a soldier to get higher ranked in the king's eyes. That being said, after suffering through reading about abuse for about 100 pages I found the disclaimer, about abuse so there, is one. I think it's good to have issues like this addressed in YA books, but I don't think this was executed well enough. To the plot itself, Lei is taken from her home and forced to be a concubine for the king, who she hates. She is trained as a concubine and becomes one; there she meets Wren. The whole relationship between Wren and Lei felt so one-sided. Half the time Wren was forcing herself on Lei. The best part of the book is when they get revenge on the Demon King.

To the actual writing of the book itself, it was pretty terrible. I'd like to point out again the overuse of using eyes to convey emotion in YA books. “Under wet lashes, her dark eyes spark.” No, they didn't. The world building in the book was terrible. There was just a cheat sheet in the front listing what all the different races were/the magic used. Come on, if you're going to attempt to write ya fantasy at least world build! This book was so underwhelming and boring. I don't understand at all why this book got all the hype. The only reason I can think is that the love story is f/f, but there are plenty of well-written f/f books that are way better than this.