Pleasantly surprised by this book! 4.25/5 stars ~~
I thought this was gonna be like all the other YAs flooding Booktube/Booktok, but thankfully it was not! I enjoyed it a lot <3
Bonus points because we were not dealing with a cast of 17 years olds, the characters are young adults yay!
So, the less good (because I wouldn't say it was BAD, just some stuff I didn't enjoy as a reader) and the good!
- It started really slow and confusing (like a lot of fantasy books) because we are introduced to a world where magic is quite different from what we're used to, so getting the lore and everything else established was a bit tedious. (I'm not a patient person :'))
- After the first 15%, the action kicks in and it's really fun!
- At a certain point it was going too fast (certain characters were too trusting, agreeing to everything that was proposed to them, which made me go o.o), but the pace settled nicely after Equinox (a celebration in the book)
- I liked the characters and their flaws, but tbh Elspeth bothered me sometimes. I didn't like her thought process on a number of things, which made me want to tear my hair out. We got the very classic "I don't want to tell the guy I love about the

Nightmare in my head because he won't look at me the same way

" trope, which made me roll my eyes pretty hard and often... 
- I also think the romance could have developped later on; I don't think the characters had enough time together to really fall in love? I guess the stuff they go through together made their feelings progress faster? I don't really know, but to me it could have been a slower burn ;)
- The spice is pretty much non-existent, for those that this interests. No descriptions, barely 3 pages T-T I wish it was more, but thankfully it didn't prevent me from continuing the book, the story had its hooks in me, which is great :)
- Can't wait to start the next one and see where all of this goes!