3.5
I just couldn't bring myself to care very much about this book or the characters in it. It's a rather short book that I probably could have finished in a couple of days had I been really interested. Instead, it took me over a month! For being a book centered around this huge magical competition, we didn't really see much of it. Each phase was only a few pages and then it was over and we were moving on to background events.

A lot of things happened rather out of the blue, for me at least, and I found myself backtracking a few times to figure out what I'd miss. Ning reads a poem before pouring tea and all of a sudden she's infuriated the judges to the point that they almost kick her out and arrest her. Like, huh? Then we are in this cave with a magical pool, its depth never actually being described to us, Ning is startled by a snake and falls into said pool. The next chapter starts and her life is literally flashing before her eyes and she's dying. Like girl, you literally just fell in. How are you basically dead already? And why aren't you trying to swim to the surface? After she is heroically rescued by Kang, because of course she was, she then reveals to us that she can't swim. While walking around the ledge of the pool, she never discloses this and only states that she's nervous. This all seemed very dramatic and only occurred to further the "romance" between the two.

The insta-love in this book happened within the first 50 pages and I couldn't have rolled my eyes harder if I tried. They both "just want to see you" over and over and girl, why? Why do you want to see him again? You know nothing about him and even suspect him of being the one poisoning the tea! Ugh.

This cover is beautiful and it feels wasted on this mediocre of a book, to be honest. At this point, I'm not near invested enough to read the sequel. I have no attachment to the characters or the story and have no qualms about putting it down and forgetting about it.