I was expecting a somewhat goofy romance with magic and cowboys, which I did get, but I got so much more! This is another book I'd recommend to people who love Harry Potter but don't want to support J. K. Rowling anymore (The first being Carry On by Rainbow Rowell). The guild feels like a magic school, and the different types of magic users creates a natural grouping of students sort of like the Hogwarts Houses. It also reminded me a bit of Gideon the Ninth, mostly in that the main character is so clearly starved for connection with others while everyone wants to be competitive instead. This is a much lighter story than Gideon the Ninth, but it's not quite as light as I was expecting. The stakes are high throughout. The story doesn't focus on too many named characters, but the ones that it does focus on feel mostly fleshed out. I definitely want to grab the next book in the series, and I appreciate that while it's clearly setting up that series in this book, the book doesn't JUST feel like the start of a series. It feels like a book on its own, if that makes sense, versus some series that feel more like a book cut into random chunks. The author narrated the audiobook and I thought they did a great job!