this book is basically just about nadir & lor attending parties and looking for things. that’s it. 404 error world-building not found. none of the characters from book 1 showed up which only prove my point that book 1 has no stake and the whole trial thing isn’t even important to the story and world-building. so why the hell did i even have to read all that? is there any good romantasy at all in this world? so far my journey into this genre has only been met with shitty books that refuse to commit 100% to the fantasy bit. you can’t have a fantasy world without politic, especially if your characters are royals. i said what i said!!! like yeah fuck the monarchy but believe it or not, it’s more than just about going to parties and shopping for dresses. my god. 
also i find it annoying when authors get all tunnel vision-y with their main ship because none of the other characters are developed, lor barely spends any time with her siblings, there’s just nothing going on with any of the other characters or even the world that they live in, i literally do not care whether anyone live or die or whether the fucking palace gets bombed and everyone perished. i literally don’t! because i know nothing about them! even the prisoners and the low fae that were casually mentioned in this book and were being treated as characters that we should care about don’t even actually show up and have a dialog of their own. Lor mentioned how a lot of the prisoners don’t deserve to be kept there, but it just feels like a half hearted attempt at making us feel sympathetic towards Lor. ohhh she’s so kind, she cares about the other innocent inmates. Yet she does nothing about it, though. 
another thing i find annoying about these romantasy books are the verbiage. “mate” “gods” or even some mentions of a random god as a replacement for the word ‘god’ itself, in this case ‘zerra’ is used. so religion is a thing in this world and yet no mention of the system or anyone praying to zerra, the god’s name is just being casually thrown in without any explanation just like every bit of ‘world-building’ in this book? i’m sick of it!! the pet name thing is always so gross too, in this case the pet name being ‘inmate’ yeahh…. no. 
still not the worst thing i’ve read, yet it still pisses me off. the note about the ~hate bj~ at the end sealed the deal for me. like that’s not a thing, methinks. how ridiculous. 

(i just sighed so loud while writing this review, my mom heard me and was like ‘wow it sounds like your life is so difficult just from that exhale’. well… yes!) 

tldr:
i will not be reading the 3rd book lol