Format: Print 

I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I do think it starts off in quite a complicated way. There are a lot of characters and alliances and it was quite difficult to get my head round all of these initially. There is a helpful list of characters at the start of the book but this didn’t stop it from feeling so confusing when it didn’t need to be. None of the characters were particularly likeable either, although I think that was very deliberate. Even when characters were very clearly being manipulated, it was hard to feel sorry for them because they also had secrets. I don’t always enjoy books with unlikeable characters, and I did spend a lot of this book wanting to shake certain characters and tell them to ‘open their eyes’, but actually, because there was no stand out ‘good’ character, this didn’t bother me at all and I found it quite interesting trying to work out who the villains were and what the different alliances were. 

I didn’t love the moments when characters broke the fourth wall, saying ‘let me tell you a story’ or ‘let me tell you what happened’. Every time this happened, I expected the narrative structure to change slightly, for this new story to be told in a different way. And this never happened. That phrase fell within the middle of the body of text and then the narrative continued in exactly the same style. I don’t think the phrase was needed at all. If you’re going to break that fourth wall, at least distinguish it in some way. 

In a similar vein, I wasn’t a massive fan of the changing POVs within chapters. The book is told by Celine and Magali, and we’d have chapters that started with Celine, then we’d have a small perspective from Magali, switch back to Celine briefly, and then return to Magali for a longer section. I found this quite jarring too. I think I’d have preferred shorter chapters told by a single character, but this really is just personal preference. 

Despite having these frustrations, once I’d gotten through the initial confusion, I actually really enjoyed this. I didn’t love it and I’m not currently planning to pick up the rest of the series

– if I ignore the last chapter which sets up the cliffhanger for book 2 and gives indications that there are bigger forces at work than our core characters –

I am very happy where this left off and will treat it as a standalone, but it was a solid 3 stars for me.