This felt a little more Beauty and the Beast than Jane Eyre, with most of the similarity being the names. For the first half I really liked the story, and the romance was cute (with the two characters being blessedly born in the same generation), but it got a lot worse after that and ought to have been about three hours of audio length shorter. I got tired of the love story (which felt surface-level, merely based on physical attraction). I couldn't accept the very quick forgiveness extended to the abusive father-figure without him demonstrating any real change (he was literally going to smother you ten minutes ago! but tell him you love him and want him in your life, I guess).

I have mixed feelings about the setting: the story takes place in Ethiopia in an unclear time period (I'm guessing similar to the setting of Jane Eyre?), and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is mentioned. Characters are Christian and pray. The main character is a debtera, which is an actual position one can have in that church. And yet there is definitely fictional fantasy magic with demons and things going on, and the role of debtera explained in ways that don't seem historically accurate, and I felt that was rather disrespectful to a church which actually exists and which the author doesn't seem to belong to. Also, though my experiences with Orthodoxy are limited to branches in the U.S., I do think that members of the Ethiopian church would probably spend more time praying to and venerating icons of saints than any characters in this book do. Also, with mention of extramarital sex and plenty of taking God's name in vain, I struggled to believe that some characters were practicing Christians at all.

2.5 stars rounded up.