⚔️⚔️⚔️⚔️⚔️ (five stars, as rated in dueling, Arthurian swords the likes of Excalibur! Huzah!)

Bree Matthews enrolls in a program for gifted teens at UNC after a tragic accident kills her mother and shatters her family. Hoping for a clean start and to put her pain behind her, Bree jumps at the chance to attend a party in the woods on her first night at school. Everything seems normal until, late that night, she witnesses a supernatural event involving a secret society named the "Legendborn." The group attempts to erase Bree's memory of the event and, convinced of their success, let her go. Realizing their mistake, Bree turns to Nick, a classmate assigned to help her with her studies and former Legendborn himself. When Bree realizes the Legendborns' connection to her own family history she begins to wonder if what happened to her mother was an accident after all...

Y'all. I could NOT put thing down. And, admittedly, I skimmed a bunch of it the first time I read it because there is a crazy love triangle and I wanted to get to the making out before I lost my mind. Having satisfied my lack of self control as far as <i>that</i> side of the story is concerned, I did ultimately go back and re-read all the denser segments that focus more heavily on lore and world building. I am super glad there are more books to this series because that world building is insane. So much Arthurian Legend. So much lore and ritual to keep straight. I don't want to give anything away as far as all of that is concerned, so let me just say that I loved it and can not wait to get my hands on book 2.

The representation in this novel is about as perfect as it gets. Seriously. I do not say that lightly. We have queer characters, gender neutral characters, characters of color, and neuro-diverse characters. There is no tokenizing. There are discussions of race and gender and orientation without making them the focus of the books. This is everything I want from contemporary fiction and particularly from fantasy. To say I am overjoyed is an understatement.

*SPOILERS AHEAD* Per the romance... Ooh boy. I am not a big fan of the enemies to lovers trope when one of said relationship has LITERALLY TRIED TO KILL THE OTHER at an earlier point in the book. This was hard for me because Bree's relationship with Sel is deeper and more (in my opinion) sophisticated than her relationship with Nick which appears to be relatively superficial. But I am not into the idea of her saving him or helping him reach mental stability. That's on him. Fingers crossed for book 2.

Rep in this book:
Content warnings for this book: death of a parent, racism, violence, battle and war themes, manipulation, mind control, death, murder, chattel slavery