This book was devastating.

Echo endures so much throughout this book and it was not what I was expecting when I read that she was a wizard. What I got was worth so much more. Echo Brown describes, in many instances throughout this novel, the struggles of what it is to be a woman, a black woman, growing up in a world that is not always on your side. This book does have magic and a magic system that is unique and used to show that many people have darkness in them. The book explores what this darkness is and that it isn't always easy to stay in the light. This power of this novel is in Echo's words as she recounts all the struggles in her life, from home to school to the relationships she has with the people in her neighborhood.

This book was both heartbreaking and so full of hope.