I… wanted to like this one so badly but I unfortunately didn’t enjoy most of it. I could’ve even dnfed and not really thought twice about it. A lot was smushed into this one book and it’s not getting a sequel. I don’t know if the author was told and decided to push everything in because she wasn’t getting a sequel or if she pushed everything in thinking that she’d get to clear things up in the sequel.

Either way, it didn’t work for me. I had the audio and I disliked the narrator, which definitely added to my ‘reasons’. Some voices were fine but for most of them I wasn’t much of a fan. Venus’s voice (the main character) was mostly okay but I really didn’t like Janus – her voice and her character. Janus’s (and maybe Venus? I don’t remember) voice was a bit scratchy and it made it difficult to hear when she (the narrator) shouted in dialogue because it was all high-pitched.

I think if Venus were either an only child or just had a different sibling I might have liked her better but because she was so much with her sister, it was difficult. I sort of liked her but not really enough to have me fully invested in the story. I kept waiting for Janus to become more likeable, to do something where I could cheer for her but it never came. In fact I didn’t like most of the side characters. I didn’t remember much of the uncle or the cousin but I also didn’t remember much of them. I liked Presley the best of the side characters (actually of all the characters). They were the best written and I wasn’t too bothered by the voice.

The plot was decent enough but because it was so jam-packed it was difficult to keep everything straight. I think only at the end I was starting to put two and two together. And because I wasn’t so interested it was hard to actually want to put the pieces together.