First of all, I really enjoyed how different the fae were and the fae realm was in this book. I like the Seelie vs Unseelie courts. I liked the romance- the touch her and you die is a great trope. My biggest gripe with the book however is that the main character, Callie, is just insufferable. I found her incredibly obnoxious- which honestly might be a result of the writing. What I mean by that it is clear the author does not know how scientists actually talk and act. The use of random scientific names and stupid jargon when Callie was talking did not make her seem like more of a scientist, because that’s not how scientists talk. Additionally, she was just kind of stupid. It took way too long to get to the

three trials, and then the trials themselves were pretty boring

. I also found her falling for the morally black villain just way too unrealistic and they

fell for each other

too fast. There were fairly large gaps in the world building and unnecessary plot points- like

wtf was the point for her blowing up the bathroom???

I can see how the author was trying to plant the seeds for the twist at the end, but I really felt like it just fell flat. There was not enough building up of the twist- for example- for the twist to be that

she was in cahoots with the seelie fae the whole time- specifically Eli- who is Eli??? He got so little mention throughout the book it wasn’t impactful when he showed back up

. Idk. I got this rec from tik tok and it just was lackluster.