I had high hopes for this book and am left feeling frustrated and wanting more. IT WAS SO CLOSE. Ugh I really wanted this to become my whole personality and Im just disappointed. It had all of the right tropes to feel like a true winner – magic, enemies to lovers, political strife, betrayal, secrets, love triangle. That being said, just because you have the right tropes and plot points does not mean that they are going to weave together well.
The two halves of the book felt nearly disjoint. The first half was very character driven and focused a lot on world building. That in and of itself is fine and makes sense when introducing a fantasy world. But it felt very unbalanced when compared to the second half. Additionally, for being remarkably character driven, the two MCs felt one dimensional. I would have appreciated spending more time with them and developing them as enemies before they started their fake arrangement. I wanted to like them so much but the writing didn’t characterize them a lot.
The second half of the book was great. It was fast paced, full of twists, and had a great plot. It does have my least favorite miscommunication microtrope which was difficult for me to read. Additionally, operating in the mindset that the two MCs truly loved each other, I just find the decisions that they each made at the end of the book unrealistic. I know that they both felt betrayed. But the root of the betrayal was miscommunication so it felt null to me.
I will definitely read the second book because I want to know what happens. But I have a low threshold for skimming it. If the characterization and pacing of the first half was better, this would have probably been a 5 star read for me.

Note this is not YA. There is an open door spice scene spanning 3ish chapters.