amberimagines's reviews
402 reviews

What a wonderful duology! Book 2 addressed some of my criticisms if the first book which I appreciated. This is a well-written and extremely engaging duology! I didn't feel like there were any wasted pages, everything was paced well and felt relevant to the story. The only thing I wish we got more of is the lore behind weaving. It felt kind of abruptly explained towards the end and that was a bit unsatisfying. But in exchange the author spent a lot of time developing characters and relationships which is where these books shine. I loved it! Highly recommend!

I think this series should have wrapped up a couple volumes ago. Nothing is even happening at this point. I'm reading for Tsuge and Minato, and they're relationship moved forward this volume which was the only interesting thing lol

I enjoyed the overall story alot!! This was exactly the engaging read I needed to get me out of a sort of reading slump. Three starts because although I loved the story, I felt like the weaving magic was not prominent enough. It was only pulled out when it was convenient and then suddenly characters could do complex weaving with no practice lol. I also wish we'd spent more time with Nehal at the academy actually learning to weave. That whole part of the plot felt irrelevant as so much time was spent elsewhere. I also felt like Nehal needed serious character development. Her selfishness and unwillingness to understand her own privilege was hinted at by so many characters, but never by Nehal herself. And when she did actually seem to self-reflect, she would then just brush it off. Throughout this whole book she refuses to listen to anyone's perspective, jumping into the work of "liberation" purely for her own interests while demanding that everyone drop anything that they might have been doing to help her or regardless of the danger she might be putting anyone in (ex: less privileged women with no husband or family or connections or money to get them out of difficult situations). I think what was most frustrating is at the end, Nehal acknowledges she did this, but then was like oh well! I ended up helping women anyway so who cares? Like??? I struggled with her mindset because so often movements that empower marginalized groups are taken over by people with extreme privilege who have no understanding of community or history, and then the marginalized people end up being the ones further hurt. It didn't help that Nehal refused to listen during her studies or when she made fun of Nico for actually studying history, when that could have helped her understand her place in history and the struggles of women who don't share her background. It also might have helped her understand prior liberation movements and attempts of women all over the world to gain rights rather than pushing forward her own very limited and potentially dangers views of the how the world works (ex: her belief that some police are bad, but that overall theyre good), which seemed to not be the case within this world). I also didn't like how she confronted that man about his sexuality when he wasn't out 😭 But all in all Nehal is a complex character and just one character in this story! Perhaps she will have some growth in the next book and we'll have more focus on other characters too. Giorgina'@ growth seemed to be pushed to the last few chapters and she wasn't as fleshed out as Nehal. Overall I enjoyed this book a lot and look forward to Book 2!

The plot in this book is all over the place! Most of it is driven by people keeping secrets from each other, like everyone had a secret they just had to keep "to protect you" 🙄. The result was a plot that felt very juvenile and silly, but this was very fast paced and the characters are entertaining so I'll read book 2!

I had to put this down for a while because I was so hurt by something that happened! 🤣 but overall I think it's a good second book in a trilogy, it was engaging and the plot moved forward a good bit. Hassa is amazing!

Even though I thought I would enjoy having the POVs from the main crew, this book is really dragging. And now it looks like we're getting set up for a Clarissa redemption arc 🙄 I'm not really enjoying it enough to try and push through unfortunately. I'm glad I gave this series a try, but I think I'll end it here!

This was lovely, I'm excited for the next volumes :)

I'm intrigued!!!

In my opinion the writing in this book is extremely corny and the romance lacked any substance but the twist at the end was surprising and felt very heartfelt! I can't say I enjoyed it, but it's definitely a quick read if you're looking for something short and kind of sweet.