A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

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The way it's connected to the story's unique astrology system and spirituality was just chef's kiss - I kinda wanted more detail on the patron deities and their eras though. Katrina needs a king's heart to perform a ritual to revive her slain mother and Malik needs to kill Karina to free his sister from a powerful being.

It's nothing any of us haven't read before, nothing really original, more like your typical I-came-to-kill-you-but-I-ended-up-loving-you kind of story, but very, very good nontheless.i really loved malik as a character, he was so soft and the rep for his anxiety was amazing but i didn’t really care for karina, i found myself dreading her characters because i feel like her character and her characters drive wasn’t conveyed well. Being a talented musician, Karina wins not only the money from her opponent, but also what appears to be an ancient book of magic. i honestly don’t know how to feel, i don’t want to rate this book until i get my thoughts straight because i really was forcing myself to read this book and i feel like it would be unfair to the author. She also makes sure to highlight internal issues that the protagonists face like anxiety and panic attacks, and it’s especially important to see that softness and vulnerability in a male lead.

Using magic that had long been dormant but was awakened by Idir, he creates an illusion of his patron deity naming him champion in front of everyone in the temple. it's literally a west african jasmine and aladdin au but they need to kill each other despite obvious attraction. duh) I did find the fact that both Karina and Malik were planning on killing the other each for their own reasons to be a very nice touch.I’m out here trying to diversify my bookshelf, and I realized really the only other fantasy series I had on my shelves that was written by a black author is Children of Blood and Bone. I know it's supposed to be part of how she deals with her trauma, but it didn't read that way--she's supposedly really smart, but also lazy, and she always seems to get lucky when she messes up, and it just didn't work for me. All that said, I do still want to read the sequel, because despite its faults (largely faltering on major components), the story did set up a lot of interesting new plot threads at the end and I'm curious how they'll play out.