I’m having mixed opinions about this. It falls into a lot of the tropes that YA books about desperate, lonely, hard-knock, youths do. This book has been raved about immensely and holds all the magical rivals to lovers tropes I like so I figured it was finally time to submerge. I’m not particularly a fan of war settings, but the magical war was mostly a backdrop for the first half of the story so I was able to ease myself into it. The fantasy level here is minimal, therefore easy to process. The war itself is caused by the gods but, again, is not immediately relevant to the plot until later on. The only other truly magical aspect is the typewriter that allows our protagonists to essentially e-mail. Despite its setting, the story is surprisingly cozy. That being said, don’t get too comfortable. I can’t rave about the writing style or depth of characters, but I suspect this is a stark example of, “Jack of all trades, Master of None: better than a Master of One.” I found myself truly invested once I reached 25% and was giggling and kicking my feet and crying along with our characters. There is nothing truly remarkable about this experience, in fact, I would argue that the beginning is exhaustingly reminiscent of every other YA war romantasy. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. The ending felt incredibly rushed as I was reading, but I was under the impression that this was a stand alone novel (surprise! It’s not!) and wasn’t prepared for it to end abruptly with unanswered questions. I’m probably gonna read the next one when it comes out 🤷🏻‍♀️