+Interesting premise
+Witchcraft
-Frustrating POV character
-Shallow side characters
-Messy plot

I had high hopes for this book going in, both due to my friends enjoying this and my experiences with Maniscalco's other series. While the Stalking Jack the Ripper series overall went downhill over time for me, I genuinely enjoyed the first two books a lot, and knew Maniscalco could at least start a series well, if not necessarily finish it well. Unfortunately, some things in this book started bugging me quickly overall, and led to my enjoyment of this book decreasing with each page.

My biggest issue with this book is Emilia. I feel like as a main character, Emilia had very little drive to push the story forward herself, and often relied on other characters to push her to action. While this isn't necessarily an issue, as it can lead to growth in later books, Emilia herself seemed to think she was in charge of everything? She constantly was fighting with everyone and pushing her assumptions on to everything, even though she overall had very little knowledge of what was going on. She was just entirely ignorant yet had the attitude of someone who knew what was going on, and it was so extremely frustrating to read. On top of that, the way she ignores or processes information at times was nonsensical. She straight up does not follow up on suspicious leads during interrogations (and there's no explanation for this either, she just ignores it), and it feels like this is only so a later plot twist doesn't get spoiled too early. She also has some extremely odd rationalizations for some of her decisions, to the point it felt like she was trying to twist the words of other characters just so that it would actually be supporting whatever ridiculous decision she was about to make. Overall, it just frustrated me so much, and I found myself constantly pausing to text the friends I was reading with to see what they thought of this particular scene or decision. And unfortunately, we spend most of this book in Emilia's head, as she's rather isolated overall, so you never really get a break from all of this. It honestly would have really helped to have some solid, consistent supporting characters that would have forced Emilia to discuss and think about her decisions and assumptions.

I didn't find the rest of the characters all that special either. Wrath felt like a cookie-cutter edgy love interest, and I feel like we didn't actually spend enough time with him for me to think him and Emilia should be endgame. This was such a disappointment for me, because I loved the dynamic in Maniscalco's other series, and I know she can write a good couple/love interest. I just don't know what happened here. On top of that, the other side characters also felt not fully fleshed out, or were underused (as of the first book at least). The villain felt super obvious from the beginning, the family was inconsistent in terms of involvement in Emilia's life (they kinda let her do whatever? even though their other daughter was just murdered?? but then sometimes they all of a sudden became super strict and suspicious of what Emilia was doing), and Emilia's only friend, if you can even call them friends, was such a small part of the story that I can't even remember her name.

Honestly, the plot was where I was most drawn in, but it too faltered more and more the closer the book got to the end. My biggest annoyance here is how Maniscalco kept inserting random, new characters/lore/backstory that seemed to come out of nowhere as explanations to some parts of the mystery. We only ever got the pieces to the puzzle right as the book was about to solve it for us. This meant that we never actually got to think about the bigger picture, and theorize, as we either had none of the info, or all of it. I also really disliked that Emilia had this sort of 'intuition' that would magically lead her to where the plot needed her to go. It felt like Emilia didn't actually have to put any work towards solving what was going on, as she was just led from place to place by either feeling or other characters.

This book just really did not work for me at all, and I'm not sure if I'll read the sequel. I'm just too frustrated with Emilia as a character, and the inconsistencies that haunt this story. The premise seemed fantastic, but it was a poor execution in my opinion.