Thank you NetGalley & Orbit for the advanced listener copy.

I liked this book a lot but there were some things that I found frustrating mostly having to do with Aila's love life, I wish less time had been spent on that overall. The best parts for me were all of the mundane things about working with animals and all the worldbuilding about how the magical creatures affect everyday life. I want to live in this world!

Aila is a main character that could easily frustrate readers, she has a lot of times where her anxiety overwhelms her and she’ll start catastrophizing. and she also doesn’t seem that great at a lot of aspects of her job, she is book smart but not real world smart. She takes things too personally and holds grudges easily. But all of these things were done in a way that felt very real and believable to me. She felt human and I loved seeing her passion for the phoenixes. I had a lot of fun following her work within the zoo and watching her try to work on her people skills.

I also really loved the relationship between Aila and her best friend, Tanya was always willing to call Aila out on her bullshit. The romance was the weakest part of the book for me because we don’t spend nearly enough time with the love interest but exploring Tanya & Aila’s friendship made up for that. Honestly, I feel like Connor (another zoo keeper that Aila has a crush on) could've been cut from the story completely and that would give more time to spend with the animals and with Luciana & Tanya.

The best part of this book by far is the animals, I love love loved all of the animals.