I loved And Down Comes the Night and I was thrilled for something new from Allison Saft! I'm honestly just not entirely sure how I'm left feeling about A Far Wilder Magic.

Did I enjoy it? 
Yes, for the most part just not in the way I was expecting. 

Was magic an element in it from beginning to end? 
Yes...and while it was an interesting magical system I almost felt as if it was never fully formed. I'm not quite sure why all politicians ended up being alchemists, the hala in general was a complete mystery, and the hunt of the hala that was built up from the beginning was over pretty quickly and ended up feeling rather anticlimactic. I would have loved to get a closer look at the alchemy, learning alongside Wes. I feel like it was more magic talked about than actually practiced and that was disappointing to me. 

There was a high focus on the characters and I suppose I liked them fine enough but Margaret was a tough nut to crack. She was very closed off for most of the book (with good reason) but it made it harder to connect with her. Wes I'm also torn on. Again, I understood his swarmy facade hiding his heart of gold shtick but some of his antics were kinda lame in my opinion and at times they felt pretty far fetched from the sweet guy underneath. This read more to me as a VERY slow burn romance and while I was satisfied with the ending in ways it also felt like it just fell short of being remarkable in each facet. I didn't feel fully swept away in the romance or the magic of it all. I think there was a lot of areas of promise here for something GREAT and in the end it just settled at GOOD ENOUGH to me. 

I received an arc of this book from Wednesday Books via Netgalley and this is my honest review.