Despite having an interesting premise, this book was just a miss for me. My main issue was the writing, which was juvenile, repetitive, and frustrating. It reminded me a lot of a cheesy teen movie with unnatural and stilted dialogue. Despite having some pretty interesting backstories, the characters all felt flat with convenient mindsets. And the romances really didn't do anything to help with either of the previously-mentioned issues. They were more annoying than anything else. The tone and atmosphere of the book was pretty empty? The author doesn't give much in the way of descriptions across the entire story (everything is just vaguely fancy and grand), and the writing really didn't provide any sort of tension despite the whole book being about a huge job to assassinate the king. It's not like it was casual or lighthearted either, it was just giving absolutely nothing in the emotion department.

Like I said, the premise of the book was promising, and I can easily see a world where this is a really strong story. It was at its best at the very end when the actual assassination plot was progressing. The short chapters made it a very quick read and I didn't put it down despite my issues (probably because I was getting through it so fast). The pacing of reveals/twists was okay. But everything else was just so disappointing and frustrating that I didn't really enjoy my time reading it.

As an aside, there was a lot of baked-in sexism in this book. I can understand having one purposefully sexist character as like a negative trait, but the effect is lost when all the men are like that but quieter. And, despite having two very capable women (almost always referred to as girls btw) in the cast, there is no growth or change by the end. Lol. Just a little something that really made me enjoy my time in this book even more.