This was one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year. The cover is absolutely gorgeous, the premise unique and intriguing. It's a shame, then, that this was let down by the quality of the writing. The story itself was great - super well constructed and well paced, but the worldbuilding was so sparse. I felt like the world could have been stunning, but we were left to fill in all the details of the setting, as well as things like the physical appearance of many of the characters. The first person narration felt clunky, as did the dialogue. The one thing that particularly irked me was that I couldn't mentally picture the practicalities of how the bowl worked - they couldn't see her eyes but she never seemed to have any bother seeing anyone else? I felt like Lim was generally a bit carried away with writing dialogue and forgot to shade in the background.

I might have looked on this a bit more kindly if it was marketed as Middle Grade rather than YA. It just felt like it lacked that additional bit of sophistication needed. I reckon I will still pick up the sequel, as I was taken with the story and characters, but have to hope that the writing improves.