Meh. Could’ve used more birds screaming death prophecies. If I read the word “decadent” again I may lose my mind. 

There were definitely parts that I found funny and I enjoyed the first half of the book. It was ultimately too long and I found myself bored with the characters and plot. I picked this one up blindly after it was recommended to me, so I did not realize it was a romance. The romance had many tropes that I did not like, which is purely a subjective thing.  

That said, I was definitely bothered by the treatment of the Asexual character of the MC’s late husband. There are non-binary characters and LGTBQ seems to be accepted in most of the cultures, but the author failed hard with Halla’s ex-husband. His lack of interest in sex is spoken of as a failure of all men and it just did not seem necessary to denigrate a (dead) character to show how attracted Sarkis was to Halla. This also felt like a weird plot device so the FMC could be virginal while still being a widow who had sex before.