The book is very slow paced, to me, and I just didn't care about any of the characters. Things are finally starting to happen 45% of the way in, but not enough to keep me interested. I don't find myself wanting to pick up the book and after this much of the book that's the sign for me to read something else.

Overall, I liked the world and the story. I thought the mix of fantasy races was interesting and there were some good twists. 

However. This book has an incredible amount of errors. I get that it was self published, but I caught three in the first 100 pages and continued to catch them throughout the book. There were also some weird word choices, in my opinion, and some writing that seemed so repetitive. One of the lines I highlighted was "It was freezing inside, as if we were standing in a freezer."

Also, the fmc has the weakest legs known to literature based on how often they wobbled or felt like jelly. The spicy scene at the end also gave me some major icks. 

An absolutely unbelievable story - the tenacity, perseverance and strength Cupcake had to develop to survive, let alone thrive later in her life is both inspiring and infuriating that she, or any child, was put on the position to bed those traits in the first place.

There was something about the prose that felt a little repetitive or too poetic at points, but I'm not sure how else it could've been written. Overall it was an incredible book and it ended exactly how I wanted it to.

I struggled with the historical textbook descriptions at the start of each chapter, and felt the execution took away from the story. I've enjoyed other books with a similar approach, like How To Murder Your Employer, so I'm not sure where this one missed the mark for me. 

I also struggled with the term multiverse because it didn't align with all the other uses of the word I've seen in popular media and so the book felt less complex/fantastical than I had expected it to be. That's probably my own bias though.

I think this story had a lot of promise, but something about the execution made it hard for me to get fully invested. Some of the dialogue and character style choices were weird to me, and the pacing felt off.

The premise is cool and I was invested enough to keep reading which keeps it at a 3.