I mean, I was engaged by this, but I kept setting it down and forgetting to pick it back up. None of the conflicts felt quite difficult enough to resolve, so there was very little sense of tension. Sydney's power was enormous from the start, and then after she absorbed the spring spell magic she was effectively unbeatable, so none of the challenges held any doubt in the outcome. The last showdown with Shara felt rather predictable, since there was no other way to raise any sense of tension given how overpowered Sydney was. Miles Merlin had the political power, which could have been a really interesting counterpoint to Sydney's raw magical power, pitting manipulation of the world against manipulation of people to see which comes out on top. But for all the talk of leaders and lawyers and alliances in the Unseen World, there seems to be very little that can actually be accomplished with manipulation of people; the world runs on pure magical power, so Miles doesn't ever manage to use his position terribly effectively. For all that he was set up as this mighty adversary, he never inconvenienced anyone very much. 

And Gray--what a missed opportunity! His true nature was revealed far, far too early, so none of the plot that revolved arond him and his past and present misdeeds had any punch. Harper's quest to make her way into the Unseen World to discover who had murdered her friend had no mystery to it, since we knew exactly who it was she was looking for. And she also gets everything done far too easily: she gets the job at Madison's law firm, is assigned the research that leads her exactly into the archives that tell her exactly what she wants to know, and then everyone she meets holds her hand to help her get the evidence about Gray she's looking for. It's too easy. And that scene where Gray stumbles to Laurent's door after the challenge that hurts him so badly--that was written like pure whump-service, but since we knew that Gray actually was a monster, it had no real oomph to it. And the way that Gray's victims are always girls that he picks up at bars felt like a feeble attempt to draw a parallel between magicians exploiting people with less magic and men exploiting women. That kind of commentary on rape culture and misogyny is so ubiquitous in contemporary fiction that this particular iteration felt perfunctory and had nothing new to add. And when your commentary on rape culture has nothing new to add to the conversation, then it just feels like a book with unnecessary misogyny in it, which I'd like to avoid in my escapist fiction please, thanks.