general in the realm. Being raised as a human around all mythical beings, she must figure out where she fits in the world, and how to protect herself against those that are stronger. Jude is set on earning her own power by proving herself, and is not afraid to get her hands dirty while doing so. She finds herself swept up in a political power struggle that is much bigger than she could have ever thought, but opportunities could be gained. There is also a broody love interest who seems to care only for himself and his own wants. 

 

See, doesnt that sound like an interesting premise? For someone who is in the exact audience for who this is written for, you would expect me to atleast like it. But nope. 

 

Basically, the story as a whole just felt like a bad attempt to remake all of the other YA fantasy books. It missed the mark on both the characters likeability, the boring and inconsequential plot, and the writing style as a whole. 

 

As many of you might already know, this book is huge on BookTok, and I can understand why. It follows very similar patterns of the young adult fantasy genre that's been popping up everywhere in the last couple of years. The main character, Jude, is supposed to be this strong woman who is fighting her own way up to power, and the male lead Caden is a dark, moody, black haired hot boy with a secret past. Pretty much textbook YA Fantasy stuff right there. Now none of this is bad, I am a sucker for these tropes myself a lot of the time, and there's a reason it's so popular. However, I really did not like the way that this book did it.

 

I'm going to be as honest about this as possible. Not a single character in this entire book is likeable. Not a single one. It drove me absolutely insane and it just put me in such a bad mood whenever I started reading it. Jude is one of those cookie cutter leads who acts like she is this smart calculated person, and then makes some of the stupidest, most rash, idiodic choices I have ever read in a YA book. Also, even though Caden was supposed to be written as someone you grow to love over the course of the book, he did not, at all. He did not show a single positive or interesting quality other than the fact that he's charming? I guess? I was really looking forward to seeing another side of him but nope, just bland all around. Like yes I understand where the author is coming from, but he just felt like a worse variation of the 100 other hot broody men in all of the other fantasy books. 

 

Not a single one of the side characters is likeable too. This is spoiler free so I won’t give anything away, but there are some decisions that a particular character makes that are just actually unforgivable, and I could care less about why the actions were done. This is a trilogy, so I know that at some point they are probably going to get some redemption arc where everything is explained, but I truly don't care, I am not hearing it. I think Madoc, Jude’s adoptive dad, is probably the only interesting person in this book. I'm not even saying likeable, but interesting. 

 

The plot was boring, especially for the first 200 pages. But that wasn't even the worst part. So many decisions and actions that were made to seem like they would make a huge impact on the story were completely erased after the about 300 pages of build up. Like I'm not joking, not a single one of the things Jude did had any consequences, it was so underwhelming and disappointing. I was actually rooting for everything to go to shit and see it all come together, but nope, NOTHING has consequence whatsoever. It's a zero stakes book. 

 

The writing was just weird to me, and I can't even really put a finger on why. Hearing from readers that have read other Holly Black books, apparently it is just her writing style in general, which it turns out I do not like. I think it's supposed to be written as a journal which was written by Jude? But it was insanely unclear. Also, it felt like everything that was important was under-explained and everything that wasn't was over-explained. Like they would get to this situation which you think would be interesting and you get a little excited, and then it just jumps everywhere and doesn't show anything you actually want to see? 

 

Even though I have a lot of complaints about it, the book overall is not awful. It's not unreadable like other BookTok things I have read which is a plus. It has an interesting plot, and I think I am going to bite the bullet and read the second book just in the hopes that maybe we will see some character growth that makes it more interesting. I don't know though that is still up for debate. 

Overall, I think my message at the end of the day would be NEVER TRUST BOOKTOK. So far, I have been persuaded into reading about 6 popular books from that app because people scream that it changed their whole life and it was the best piece of literature ever written. The thing about BookTok is, the actual descriptions of the books sound fine. That's how they get you. So when you read the description you figure oh it must be good and is in my taste. Nope. Just save yourself the trouble and get book recommendations from any other possible source.