This is my first Ruth Ware and I really did like it! I remember reading Turn of The Screw for the first time in college and being the only one in my class who liked it, lol. I really enjoyed the epistolary portion of this book, I think I would have liked it more if we had gotten more of that. For portions of this it doesn't actually read like she is writing a letter to someone. 

The twist was great, and a very satisfying reward for a book that's pretty slow in its pace.

A cute and cozy, feel good fantasy romance about a witch who is hired to train three young witches. I loved the writing -- very whimsical. I wished we got to delve more into the main character's headspace and past but maybe that would have changed the tone of the project? I'm not sure, either way it's still very solid.

And the plot twist! (I did see it coming but it was still cute when it happened).

I needed a little more pining, and a little less running away and miscommunication with siblings. But otherwise, pretty good read.

I'm a little disappointed with the writing. For some reason, I did not think it would read like that. Towards the end of the book I just stopped caring about the plot as it felt clear to me that the author did not care either. 

The thing with dark romances is that they kind of live and die by their characters and I just did not like the couple here. Everyone just felt like a caricature and not like a real or complex person. Additionally, the age gap is just...ELECTRIC CHAIR!! The fact that the age gap is emphasized without any real interrogation of the power imbalance is a real turn off. I've read age gap that is done very thoughtfully, this is not one of those to me.

From the description of this book, I thought this would be something I would really like. It sounded like a little bit of court intrigue and politics, but it ended up feeling a little lackluster. It may partly be my fault; I did not understand that this book would be an ensemble cast. For a considerable part of this book we are not following Beyr or Alba. Additionally, the political intrigue felt very surface level and...not that intriguing. But that's fine, I can handle a basic fantasy and still have a good time. In my opinion, what really brought this down for me is the ableism.

A pet peeve of mine is when authors "cure" characters with disabilities, in this case Beyr's speech impediment. You're telling me that all this other fantastical stuff can happen but Beyr can't just live his life happily with a stutter?!

. Thanks, I HATE IT.

What makes this rating incredibly disappointing is how into this book I was at the start. I was pretty sure this was going to be a 4 or 5 star read. The premise is really interesting and I loved when we just focused on Mallory. However, this book really suffers from the fact that the author wrote from too many perspectives. We get a chapter from so many people with barely any actual room in the text to truly get to know them. It didn't feel like those chapters added tension or intrigue, which is what they are meant to do. I think if the author had focused on one or two characters it would have been a better book.

Additionally, towards the end the plot really got off the rails. I love crazy stuff happening as much as anyone but that was just chaos. Unenjoyable chaos.

What started out as endearing, got old very very fast. The main character feels like a stereotype and I figured out the mystery very early on. Hm.

The beginning is just really slow. Like really slow. Maybe I will try again later?

I didn't get far in this book at all but some of the language around slavery in this fictional universe made me really uncomfortable. This feeling made me seek out reviews and some of the stuff I read in there related to the darker skinned love interest as well as how slavery is handled in this book made me feel the need to stop before I got any further.