Some surprises throughout that I was a huge fan of because I thought this book would be kind of genetic and irritable and it absolutely wasn't and I loved that. ( )

Aurelia is a princess, but they call her a witch.

Surrounded by spirits and burdened with forbidden magic, she lives in constant fear of discovery by the witch-hunting Tribunal and their bloodthirsty mobs. When a devastating assassination attempt reveals her magical abilities, Aurelia is forced to flee her country with nothing but her life.

Alone and adrift in an enemy kingdom, Aurelia plans her revenge against the Tribunal, desperate to bring down the dark organization that has wrought terror upon her people for hundreds of years. But there’s something deeply amiss in her new home, too, and soon she finds herself swept into a deadly new mystery with a secretive prince, the ghost of an ancient queen, and a poison vine called Bloodleaf.

Aurelia is entangled in a centuries-long game of love, power, and war, and if she can’t break free before the Tribunal makes its last move, she may lose far more than her crown.

I had to stay up until 2am to finish reading, I couldn't wait until morning. What I loved most was that while common tropes existed, there were a few that danced across the page as a red herring!

Both my 11yo son and my friend's 15yo daughter also plowed through the book in 1 day! ( )

I loved the magic system - I wish we had seen more of the other two branches of magic. This book didn’t really end like it needed a sequel, much less a trilogy, and the synopsis of the next book has me in an extreme case of “?!?” for reasons I can’t really talk about without spoiling too much of the book.

Aurelia is tough and grieving and somehow powers through bad news after bad news. Zan is a sweet, broken man. Nathaniel and Kate are perfect. And Kellen - oh man do I love a protective bodyguard story. ( )

I did like the concept for this book. However, I found myself struggling with it. There was no strong connection towards any of the characters. In addition, I found new ones introduced very quickly before I had a real chance of trying to get to know the others first.

The world was cool but could have been fleshed out a bit more. Like I would have liked to gotten to know more details about it. Which would have helped some but I can tell you that it would not have helped a lot as I still needed that character connection.

After having read another book that was similar like this in the ya genre, I realized that this book was more geared towards the younger reading audience. Whereas the other book could span both younger and adult readers. While, I may not have liked this book as much as I had hoped, I would read another one by this author. ( )