In the summertime, the highest compliment I can pay a book is that I read it at the pool and stayed out too long and got sunburnt.

I am extremely sunburnt.

My soul is sunburnt.

Checked every single box of things I don't like about apocalyptic fiction.

Nothing about this worked for me, and I so, so wanted it to. I enjoyed Garber's Zodiac, (though I haven't finished the series) and I saw her in a panel at Phoenix's comicon in May and this book sounded so fun.

It takes way too long to get into the magic world, and by the time we did, I was so sick of Manu that I half hoped someone would eat her. The school was just as stupid as Harry Potter: all they do is practice fighting magic, and the constant references to the aforementioned overrated series made me grind my teeth.

The world building makes no sense, and doesn't even have the courtesy of being interesting.

The characters were all irritating and half the time I didn't know who was speaking (I did the audio version), but luckily 100% of the time I didn't care.

The storytelling was decent but it's hard to get wrapped up in a love story when the king is straight up psychotic.

This wasn't good when I read it at 22 and it's still not good at 32.

Surprisingly fun, though this did feel like more of a build-up to the rest of the trilogy. The main character is realistic but just spicy enough to keep things interesting.

Cute enough, but lacked anything memorable.