Princess Amri is a likeable enough protagonist, though she does seem to have a case of the “not like other girls.” She’s fierce and feisty when she has to be, but also kind and sweet. She knows about weapons and can hold her own in a fight, but she doesn’t have a lot of agency and things just seem to HAPPEN to her. She reads books and is the only member of her family to care about elven culture or bother learning their language, and she has not one, but two handsome princes vying for her hand in marriage. 

She’s every bit a fantasy heroine cliche, and in some ways, I’m fine with that. I can vibe with that. I was hoping to be swept up by the romance, by the fantasy of it, and waiting for the author to surprise me. But the book just doesn’t ever take me there.

I love shared perspective, especially in a romance novel, and I really, really love third person narrative. But this book was a little tricky to read, if anything I would describe it as third person omniscient. It trades between the characters’ perspective randomly. Personally I think it would have worked better if each chapter was dedicated to one character’s perspective, (like: Game of Thrones) or at least had a line break with the character’s name or something to indicate when the perspective would shift mid-chapter. I don’t feel like I got a chance to truly be in the characters heads, and I feel almost thrown off by the shift when it happens. 

I’m also not a fan of the way this book is WRITTEN. Dialogue is painful to read because the author avoided using contractions, in what I suspect is an attempt to make it sound more old-worldy, but which just comes off as stilted and unnatural.  

(I could forgive the elf characters for speaking this way, since English wouldn’t necessarily be their first language, but Amri does it too, and it’s weird.)

Also, I really, really wish there wasn’t so much sexual assault in this book. It’s unnecessary. Amri can be a feisty badass without almost getting assaulted, please trust me, this didn’t need to be included to make me root for her. 

I enjoyed reading it, but overall… it wasn’t groundbreaking - It was just okay.