I was suggested this book as a recommendation after reading the A Court of Thorns and Roses series.

The first 25%-30% of this book I found quite boring, it took me longer to read this section than the rest of the book. It started to pick up a lot more with

the attempted abduction of the main character Poppy and the murder of one of her personal royal guards, Rylan.

I could not put the book down after this, and read pretty large chunks afterwards, finishing a bulk of the book in 2 days. This is that majority of where the 2.5/5 rather than 4/5 stars comes from. 

My other main criticism of this book, but not as much as the first point is

the romantic relationship between Poppy and Hawke. I found it pretty cringey for some parts, but also love him as a chaotic character of weird morality.

He reminds me of (ACOTAR spoiler)

Rhysand a lot, but if Rhysand was a bit more murdery and psycho I guess?

. 

I definitely recommend this book for people who liked ACOTAR. I think the overarching conspiracy theories are very engaging once you start to get into it. I will say that a lot of the twists were very easily predictable for me, but YMMV. I think this book was really used to set up a lot for the rest of the series, so just try to get through it if you find parts boring because I have a feeling more exciting things are in the future. I finished the book today, and the ending had a twist I actually was not expecting at all that was left as a cliffhanger. If anything, it made me happy that I can start the next book asap because I am feeling the same type of excitement that I felt when (ACOTAR/ACOMAF spoilers)

Feyre was taken to Velaris

.