the best word i can use to describe this book is WEAKSAUCE

honestly this book had so much potential and delivered on none of it. it was, quite frankly, a waste of my time and a disappointment. i didn't hate it, hence, two stars, but i absolutely did not care about one single character past the halfway mark and by about 75%

at the culmination of the romance hehe

i was rolling my eyes and cringing so hard. blegh. 

honestly the biggest missed opportunity here was the setting. it has an identity crisis, which is a bummer because it could have been great? we gave a vague idea of sorta bland wwii europe, but if wwii was fought because of like, gods and stuff. things were not clearly explained, but that wasn't even the main issue i had with this. 

I really feel like this book would have been better as an adult book. NOT because of the romance / sex, but because if you're going to write a book that takes place in a country at war, where war is a central theme, where the characters are literally on the battlefield dodging grenades, it seems disingenuous to gloss over the horrors of said war. its, like, soooo sanitized and cutified, and call me jaded but considering there is literally a war going on in Gaza right now, i just don't love the fact that the war is watered down just to create the backdrop of a romance that's as generic and bland as store brand white bread.  perhaps you don't have to show every gritty detail, but this just feels like an edited down version of what the story could have been to appease the current publishing landscape that greatly favors YA titles in the fantasy genre.

2 stars, will not read the second, not sure why everyone likes this so much