“Don’t make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”
There were many things about this book that I thought were well done. The first thing that stood out to me was how well Deonn does with the treatment of Bree’s grief for her mother. Having lost my own mother at a young age, this felt very true to life, especially the idea of a before Bree and an after Bree. I also really appreciated how direct Deonn is with the racial issues that Bree faces. All of the micro aggressions are not treated as being something subtle to be overlooked, but are brought to light very clearly. I also thought that Deonn does a nice job with the descriptions of the action scenes, which is something that I think some authors struggle with in fantasy writing.

I did still have some issues with the book. Firstly, the world-building and magic system were so hard to follow, especially at the beginning. I’m still not sure that I fully grasp what all the different titles mean and what kind of powers different people have. While I think Deonn did well with fully fleshing out Bree’s character, most of the other characters I thought could have used some more development. Many of them become Bree’s “friend”, but we don’t really get many scenes to show that true development of a relationship. Take William for example. He heals Bree and does a lot of infodumping, and then Bree starts considering him to be her friend. Her relationship with Nick felt similarly undeveloped for me. I felt like we got more for a relationship between Nick and Sel than we did for either of them with Bree.