hmm this is a hard book to review.

I was really excited about this one after seeing Sidrah live-blogging her reactions. However, I think I went in expecting something else than what I got.

I talked about this with Sidrah and how some of the elements in this book are more typical for adult fantasy, and how because of that it made it hard for me to get into the story.

The book started off very slow for me. I didn't feel invested in the characters or the story, and while the plot sounded interesting, it didn't completely capture my attention until almost half-way. 

It really takes a while to fall in love with the side characters, and while for most of the book I felt a little annoyed cause I didn't like anyone so much, I think it was worth the wait to see their relationships develop and grow. It made for certain scenes to be more emotional too.

This book is very dark, gory, and disturbing. But I think it shows the reality of what colonizers have done to Indigenous peoples in our world. One specific scene gave me major Hunger Games vibes which I absolutely loved. 

However, the romance that ends up developing closer to the end of the book just didn't work for me. I knew it was building up to it, but I thought it would be less "in your face" as it was in the last few chapters. The plot-twist I partly saw coming, and the rest was interesting.

I will be honest, I skim-read the last half of the book just out of impatience. Most of the book felt too slow, and then it would finally pick up for a few chapters, and then go back to slow. At one point in one of the later chapters, a whole week is quickly summarized into a couple pages, which felt odd considering the amount of detail we got about the training and physical tests. 

The ending was pretty epic though and definitely had me rooting for Sloane for a second. Despite that, I don't know if I enjoyed the overall book or writing style enough to read the next book. It's possible if I had read this at a different time, I might have enjoyed it more.