So I read this book while I was fixing my garden. A storm came through and knocked down my tomato trellis so I was fixing it and it’s important to me that you have that context. That is because I was taken by surprise at the ending, not necessarily because it was a twist ending. But rather because it just ended. I’m expecting another two or three hours to be on this audiobook. When all of a sudden I have the narrator popping off with “ has been an unabridged reading of….” 

Shocked me because not a lot happened. 

I like the main character enough. I do think she was entertaining. But I don’t think that her skills shined through well because for some reason the author decided to make everyone she went up against incompetent? I would much rather the crew be just as formidable as her crew is said to be, rather than one person on the crew (the interest obviously) Be intelligent so that she has an easier time sneaking around. It really kneecaps your main character to have everyone that she interacts with be below her. It doesn’t make her look cool and exciting the way that I know the author intended, it just made the book feel cheap.

I really do like the magic system in this. It’s subtle. It has distinct rules and shortcomings. It meshed really well into the world.

t That said having an entire arc of the story dedicated to documenting exactly how it works felt really unnecessary. I had figured out the rules of her powers long before all of that so it just felt redundant. And the villain that they’re dealing with in this section was not built up enough. He should’ve been mentioned beforehand. Because it just felt like an excuse for the author to info dump rather than a natural progression of the story.

On the romance:

what in the Insta love Lacroix brand love triangle nonsense was that? That was so quick and so unnecessary. This book was trying to be an enemies to lovers but failed spectacularly. They were MUTUALLY into each other way too soon. I really just need Tricia to bite the bullet and start writing adult books. At least new adult. It’s clear that she wants to, and I think that it would severely improve the overall quality of the books if she wasn’t having to tone them down to fit into the ya genre.

Was a quick read (apparently), And I have the next book on hold. I was under the impression that this book was a duology but looking on  here I saw a third book listed? So I guess I need to look into that to see how many books I’ve gotten myself into.