Do you ever wish that you were Jared? 19? 

Cuz this book made me wish I was?

I knew I shouldn't have bothered, I knew I should have taken booktok's word when they said this books was a dumpster fire. But I had some time to kill and figured I'd TRY to give ol' Nate the benefit of a doubt with the free exerpt you could read (he's now removed that option I believe... telling) even though this is FAR from my usual genre. 

Never again. 

This book reads like a fifteen year old boy who just discovered Alpha bro podcasts but also is dating a girl who is into crystals wrote a self insert victim fantasy. The author has said something to the effect that this book IS loosely(?) based off his own healing journey. So its entirely likely that is is a dramatized version of his life as it existed in his head. It is trying SO HARD to be intellectual, and thought provoking while being so surface level about those issues that it's genuinely painful. I was having more insightful conversations about the human experience at sleepovers when I was 9. 

I forced myself past the age gap (19f 35ishM), I squinted past the fact that the love interest wears her hair in pigtails 🤮, heck I was willing to ignore the objectivly bad writing cause maybe there would be a moral EVENTUALLY. 

My breaking point was when he writes "when you grow up with a single mom and are educated by female teachers you learn pretty quickly to associate your sense of worth with a woman's approval." 
This was prefaced by him likening women to an addictive substance such as alcohol or weed. Something that could take over your life and cause you to completely change who you are to fit them. So he is blatantly, with his full face forward, blaming single mothers and female teachers on his compulsive need to objectify women.

Every f*cking day people get on to God's given internet and prove Sigmund Freud right. This is a sin for which I can never forgive! 

But that's a whole other issue that I have neither the time nor the patience to get into.

Anyway yeah, don't waste your time here. This story is not special. You can find better writing in a bad Wattpad novel. Not even a mediocre Wattpad novel, a BAD Wattpad novel largely overtakes this. Trust your gut and let this book fall into obscurity where it belongs. 

This book was so much fun! I've been anticipating it for a while, and finally got around to properly reviewing it.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this book was the way that people talk to each other. They felt like they were actual people having a conversation. I've read too many authors this year that fell into a trap of having their characters give "speeches" to each other. So they could have these beautiful prose... But it didn't fit the conversation they were having 5 minutes ago. With this I felt like I was actually listening in onto a real conversation. And there were still beautiful, quotable moments that could be pulled from that didn't come out of nowhere. The characters all felt really fleshed out, we get to see a growth of hatred to camaraderie, ignorance to understanding. And it was done really well.

This book tackled some subjects that are very heavy. There's a lot of purity culture involved, there's some deconstruction, conflicting ideologies are going against one another. But for the most part it was handled with a Grace that I was really impressed to see.

There were a couple of times where I thought it went a little bit too fast. It could have taken a bit more time to really get into the why of everything. What we got was good, I just thought we could have gotten a bit more.

Now for my biggest critique, and this is just a me thing, but why is this other world story using the Gregorian calendar? Why did I have to read the word September in a fantasy novel with sorceresses and Giants?! I could not care less if you use champagne in your story, or if you say the word "platonic." But so help me make your own calendar please!! Takes me right out of the story. My suspension of disbelief is shattered and I have to restart my entire investment. Like I said that's a really nitpicky thing, and other people might not mind at all, but it's a little pet peeve of mine.

This book was cute, and I will definitely read the sequel(s?) But it had a lot off issues. Characterization was everywhere, the romances were very rushed, the world building has potential so I hope the next book handles it better. 

Over all it was a fun read, I'd recommend it to people who like the secret identity trope. 

I could not handle the "she's not like other girls" trope. Which is so sad cause I LOVE this authors other works

I cannot recommend this book enough!! It checks every one of my boxes!! This is the kind of story that you read and it becomes a part of your personality... Or is that just me? 

Anyway, I loved the way this wrapped up! It was exactly what it needed to be and I adored every second of it!

Kalen's death had me SOBBING even though the tell you he dies in book ONE and you know he comes back! I was emotionally destroyed!! 

There are so many twists in this series and so much development to the charecters!! I loved it so much!!!

And to think that I thought I was going to hate this series when I first pick up that first book! So SO good!!!

Y'all I did not know why I was getting into when I signed up for this book. Was it amazing? Yes! But let's just say that there is a trigger warning in the beginning of the book for a very good reason! I swear I was barely a fourth of the way through the book and I'd already read about five different panic attacks that One singular character had had. And they were almost unnecessarily accurate descriptions. As someone who experiences similar shutdowns there are a couple of times that I had to just mentally take a break from this book.

Also it was weirdly sexual at the weirdest times. Like there's no spice in this book, like there's a mentions of things happening but no explicit detail. But you only realize that in hindsight, cuz these characters are horny at the absolute worst times. Like I don't even know what else to say about that it was just very weird.

Also there's like seven different plot lines that are all happening at once. You have a deal with a demon and trying to break out of it, you have a murder mystery, you have a trial to win the hand of the princess, you have centuries of oppression that are building back up again, you have secrets and lies about history coming to light. This is not a long book but there is so much happening all at once that it's a lot to take in!

Also be aware that there is a particular character that you will fall in love with immediately and they will break your heart. There is no avoiding it, they are simply too pure and too perfect for this world and thus you should have known already that you were signed up for pain. Nobody warned me so I'm warning you now.

The magic system, and their whole religion system is extremely complicated and I'm not entirely sure I still understand it. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out now that everything has come to light. It'll also be interesting to see how everything resolves between the main characters. Because I definitely did not expect it to end like that, so we'll see how it goes

Also that was somehow the most anticlimactic way to defeat a villain, while also being the most dramatic way to defeat a villain that I have ever seen! Like boy just really said "b**** I had a scared of the literal demon you should see the inside of my head!" Like weird flex but it worked so okay?

Everything about this read was bizarre in a way that was exactly what I wanted! I am so excited to see where it's going to go from here!

I did not think that I was going to like this book. Not for one second did I think that I was going to like this book. I picked it up because it was the only thing available at the time and I can't even tell you in proper words how good this book was! If you liked the non-linear storytelling approach that we got in The Witcher then this is definitely a book for you! Because it begins at the end of the story! You know that terrible things are going to happen you just don't know exactly how we got from point A to point B.

There is so much dark energy happening but it's done in such a way that it's still very fun and it's even more so funny. There's so much humor in the book, and it just adds itself so much to the narrative. Fox leaves me in stitches almost every time he's on page. The man is the funniest dead person that you're ever going to meet and I love him.

Watching Tea grow into an accomplished asha is so satisfying, you feel like you're going here with her. And the twist at the end actually had me surprised. I thought I knew what was going on and then I found out that all of these little bread crumbs had been leading me in the exact wrong direction intentionally. That bait and switch had me shook! In hindsight I should have seen it coming, all of the signs were there I just didn't catch them fast enough! (Also a couple of them were not there and we find out why later, and normally that upsets me but it was done well enough here that I was okay with it, I know that probably didn't make sense to anyone other than myself but these reviews are really for me and they're just like a book journal thing so deal with it)

I spent the entire book begging and hoping and pleading that her love interest was not going to be the prince. That the boy buried in the grave at her campsite was not going to be the prince, but was instead going to be the golden retriever angry boy captain that I love so much! Because I have a type, sue me. I was in the middle of my art class when it got confirmed which boy was the end game boy and I had to leave the classroom and do a lap because I was so excited.... Which is extremely funny given that in the very start of the book we get told that the boy that she loves is dead so me being excited about that was... There's a lot to unpack there I'm aware... Anyway

It was such a fun read, and I love everything about the story so much! I look so forward to seeing more from this and seeing how the characters are going to change and what they're going to do now that she has all of the things in her arsenal to do what she promised to do.