I feel like I've found the Holy Grail--a YA fantasy series starter that actually does deserve to be a series!! THEY DO EXIST.

Most of the time I find myself yelling THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN A STANDALONE at a lot of YA fantasy books where the author (and the publisher, ka-ching) absurdly decided to stretch a one-book story into two or three (or more...sigh). So I'm very glad that this one felt like a substantive, fast-paced story which did in fact need more than one book to tell it. And I'm really looking forward to the next one.

This was surprisingly entertaining. That's sounds condescending, but I only mean that YA fantasy retellings are so common now, and so many of them end up being thin, messy, overly complex or else slow and plodding, and as I said, totally undeserving of multiple books. I went into this one with moderate expectations, and it definitely exceeded them. I love the idea of gender-flipping a revenge story, because young women being abused by men to the point of wanting to end a motherfucker is way more believable and acceptable to me.

I mean...not the killing part. Don't kill people. Just as the author says in her note at the end:

And thanks to you, dear reader, for picking up this book. I hope you make your fortune and punish those who've wronged you.
(But like...legally.)
(Please don't stab anyone.)

Agreed as far as IRL goes, but for the story...hell yes, I wanna see a wronged woman put the hurt on shitty man. I also really appreciated seeing Amaya's and Cayo's personal struggles and inner turmoil, and the ways they both tried and failed to cope with it. The villains were dark and cruel without being cartoonish, and there were definitely a couple of revelations in here that caught me off-guard.

A very fun and well-written book. Here's hoping the March 2021 pub date for the sequel doesn't get delayed like so many others, because I'm going to want to read it right away.