Format: Print 

I am absolutely gutted not to be giving this more than 3 stars. I thought the plot was great – it was well thought out, it flowed well, and it kept a good pace. And the last 60 pages or so – fantastic! 

Unfortunately, I just had a major issue with the characters. I’m not saying every character has to be likeable but they were nearly all insufferable. 

Let’s take our main character, Imani, for instance. She was stubborn, arrogant, single-minded, unwilling to learn or change (for the most part). Every time I thought she could be redeemed she went backwards yet again, right up until we were nearly at the end of the book. It does show a significant amount of character growth and I really hope this continues into future books. 

And then we have Taha, our ‘kind of’ male love interest. I think something really important could have been said here about inequality and classism but it failed because Taha and his team were bullies. And his personality would switch depending on whether he was alone or with his friends. That ability to shift personalities is probably a good thing in his line of work but it was giving me whiplash and it just made me angry at him. 

Overall, I think this had a lot of potential and, as I’ve said, those last 60 pages or so were fantastic. I will be picking up the sequel as I could see this becoming a more enjoyable read for me as I continue with the series but it’s such a shame that I didn’t love this in the way I wanted.