To save the people they love, a crown princess and a refugee each must kill the other — without falling first.
- Score
- 78.0
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- dual
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise the richly imagined world rooted in West and North African folklore — the magic system, naming conventions, and matrilineal political structures are widely described as fresh and immersive. The representation of Malik's anxiety and panic attacks is singled out as unusually honest and unglamourised for YA. Kirkus gave it a starred review calling the world-building 'exceptionally well-built,' and it debuted as a New York Times bestseller. The most consistent criticism is that the romance feels underdeveloped for a book marketed on its romantic tension: the entire story unfolds over roughly one week, and the two leads share relatively few scenes together, leading many readers to call the attraction insufficiently earned or bordering on insta-love. Pacing is also divisive — some find the festival momentum propulsive while others note the middle chapters drag.
Read it if
- · Readers who want YA fantasy steeped in West and North African mythology with a diverse, own-voices cast and genuine cultural specificity
- · Fans of Children of Blood and Bone or An Ember in the Ashes who want a competition-driven narrative with morally complex protagonists on a collision course
- · YA readers who appreciate dual-POV stories where both leads are flawed, desperate, and capable of genuine harm
Skip it if
- · You want a well-earned slow-burn or slow-developing romance — the attraction moves quickly despite the short timeline and divides readers
- · You are sensitive to themes of grief, dark magic, human sacrifice, panic attacks, and animal death — all are central to the plot
- · You prefer standalone fantasy — this is book one of a duology and ends on unresolved threads
If you liked this
- · For fans of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi — West African-inspired YA fantasy with a fierce heroine, oppressive political backdrop, and high-stakes magic
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir — dual-POV protagonists from opposite sides of a conflict drawn together by forbidden attraction amid deadly competition
- · For fans of Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko — lush African-inspired world-building, a protagonist navigating a dangerous court, and found-family-adjacent bonds tested by political betrayal
- · Like Six of Crows but YA — morally grey characters with conflicting agendas forced into proximity, set in a vibrant non-European fantasy world
Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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