While it was good and I want to finish it, I lost interest. 

Going to listen to the audiobook instead. 

With all the hype surrounding this book, I was expecting a great fantasy book including dragons, romance, and an interesting plot. Well, this book certainly checks the boxes for dragons and romance. The plot? Not so much. This book isn’t even well written and even if it does take place in a fantasy world there is barely any world building. Instead it has a bit of dragons and a very slow plot that is heavily influenced by the romance that doesn’t happen even 300 pages in. 

I can understand the hype of this book with a snarky main character who is very bookish and a broody love interest. But this is just not a book I am interested in. I’m glad I gave it a shot, but I am also glad that I have become more willing to DNF books when they don’t interest me. 

This story was going great until the author decided to bring a pregnancy into the plot. Not only that but the fact that the supposed couple had only a few chapters together before they were separated and then each given their own plots. And each characters plot felt like it should have its own book instead of sharing a book and alternating POV’s throughout the book. Each time the POV changed it felt like being doused with a bucket of cold water as the reader was suddenly pulled away from one plot and had to reorient themselves onto the second plot. And don’t get me started on the lack of chemistry between the supposed couple. They are introduced as best friends and yet once they are separated one character makes the choice to go through with a marriage of connivence to save the underworld from a witch and then ends up pregnant and suddenly her personality does a 180 and she becomes a terrible character. And then the best friend shows up and suddenly it’s a love triangle. That is the moment I called it quits. But I did look at the last chapter to find out the pregnant character runs off with her more than best friend and has the baby and keeps it hidden from her husband. Talk about a soap opera.

I am so furious that another book I considered decent was ruined by a pregnancy trope and a barely there love triangle that had no chemistry. What a waste of time. 

Ran out of time to read this for class. I do want to finish this someday, just can’t right now. 

A lot of depressing themes that I really don’t want to read about. Both characters had more things to complain about than not, and hardly anything about books. I was reading for the books; not the dead best friend, sick mom, past bullying, or both characters complaining about how terrible their parents are. 

I tried to give this a shot, but the moment the owner of the manor was talking like an influencer and was “manifesting positivity” I was done. It sounded like a cool idea with a manor next to a sinister wood with a lot of lore and deaths connected to it. But I just couldn’t stick it out. 

I’m going to try the audiobook of this instead. You can tell that this is one of Sanderson’s very first books. Even though its an interesting plot, he had not honed his writing skills yet and the flow seems off and there is a constant info dump that it is hard to keep up.