The Hurricane Wars swept me away from the first page with its beautifully crafted descriptions of the world that is inspired by Southeast Asia. I was intrigued by the premise and absolutely sold on the prospect of a true enemies to lovers story which is why I continued reading but it did take a while to get to the point where the two characters met. However, the build up was important, in my opinion, to give gravity to the depth of their enmity and yet the force of their attraction. I could not look away! 

While I loved the tension of the characters and the absolutely beautiful prose, this book still had the usual tropes and pitfalls of YA which, to each their own, but I’m not necessarily a fan of it. The FMC is feisty and reckless, the MMC is repressed and controlled. There’s a lot of drawling, a lot of spit firing, a lot of her angering him, a lot of him hiding things from her until she finds out and changes her mind a little about him. And I’m sure there’s more to come. Not that I hated all of them but it just made me feel like why do all YA fantasy novels have to have this? 

Besides that, you have to read this book for the descriptions of food. Food that you can absolutely go out and eat, if you live in SEA that is. I loved seeing food I grew up eating written on the pages and the way of way Nenavarene is built is so SEA-like. I’m very glad that Guanzon wrote this one and am very looking forward to the next instalment.