First of all, this was a nice little story. I personally think it was a nice side read, but I'm VERY glad I didn't spend $30+ for the Fairyloot version. It is not worth that kind of money.

Secondly, I'm going to be honest - I REALLY didn't like Alessandra. Sure, here and there I enjoyed her, but . . . for me, she was just too vain and too cruel/cold for the first three-quarters of the book. Whether this is just to ultimately show her character development for bad planning on Levenseller's part, I felt greatly disconnected from her even with the first person POV. I couldn't care about her whatsoever. While I admire her strength, focus, and femininity, but that did not make up for her other . . . limiting characteristics.

Thirdly - world building. I felt like this world could've been fleshed out SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more! I wanted to learn more about Kallias's shadows, see into his family's past! I wanted each country Kallias had conquered to have its own uniqueness and styles. I felt like there were gaps in this part of the story - all we got was that they had different clothes. I also think that the fact that they had electricity took away from the fantastical parts of the story.

Finally - pacing. The pacing was way off for The Shadows Between Us. Levenseller tried to cram too much into too small of a book. At times, we'd follow her for a few days. Other times, it was only one day. The whole course of the book takes over 2 months, but I thought it was more like a week! The scenes with conflict were resolved MUCH too quickly. There needed to be more suspense and more conflict (especially concerning internal conflicts within Alessandra).

Overall, it was a nice, quick read!