The only reason I finished this book beyond about 15% is because I could listen to Nathan Foad read a phone book. He truly did a phenomenal job. This book, however, is like if you put Hunger Games, Gideon the Ninth, and a dash of Agatha Christie in a blender with some milk and then left it out in the sun to rot. Everything was incredibly contrived, the theme of "every person has worth" gets slammed over your head so much I was literally gagging by the end, the romance plot makes absolutely no sense, and none of the intrigue was discovered by the characters *doing* anything. We literally sit at the end observing a nearly hour long (narration time!) chess game while one character rehashes to the other the entire plot of the book that we just suffered through listening to with the added flavor of explaining the ins and outs of a nonsensical murder plot. Don't be fooled by the pretty cover or tempted by the sprayed-edge hard copy, this book was straight up terrible.