This book needed a little bit more balance between the romance and the rest of the world building and plot. This book relies on the fact that these two main characters are fated mates, a fact that the main male character Lothan recognizes immediately and the main female character Ada resists and denies for the majority of the book. While this setup is quite common, as is the amount of sexual attraction between the main characters, I think the book spent more time on the world building and setting up the story and the series over really progressing further in any sort of romantic development between these characters.

I thought it was very interesting to learn about Lothan's brothers and how the whole structure of the world and government was set up, how the religion played a part in balancing the government and to learn about how the father had made rules for his sons and how the world would be after he passed. However this took the place of any of the romantic development and all of the extra page count that I was hopeful would be a chance to flesh out more connection between the love interests was instead spent on the brothers bickering about joining the religious order. I think there was some component of the main female character starting to believe in the goddess of this culture, something to do with her wearing the crown? That felt like a weird inclusion. I also didn't fully understand the dynamics between the various brothers, they were fighting each other for power but also hated each other but also helped each other? I think that these will be the main characters in future books of the series.

Overall I just wanted a little bit more strength of emotion and development of the romance, but I do think this world was interesting and would give this author another try. Upon reading reviews I was surprised at how many people thought that Ada was an absolutely terrible heroine, I saw people calling her too stupid to live and stubborn and a bitch?? I saw multiple people say that Lothan deserved better and Ada was too dismissive of their bond? I do remember being a little frustrated at some of the choices that Ada made, but she doesn't believe in fated mates and had her own mission to find her sister, and there was a good chunk of the book where she literally couldn't even communicate? While I do think she made some rash and poor decisions, that didn't bother me to the extent some of these reviewers expressed.

Overall I thought this was a perfectly fine time. At the beginning there were a lot of characters to try to keep straight and I struggled because it didn't seem like they had very distinct personalities, but a little bit of the way in I felt a bit more organized, even though I wasn't really liking it. Overall I struggled to feel invested in this book, both in wanting to solve the mystery and in caring about these characters. I enjoyed the nods to And Then There Were None, but admit that I had a better time with the Christie over this one. I took turns having theories and suspicions of various characters, ranging from people who we thought were dead but weren't really dead but then they were faking being dead, and sideways glances at characters I thought were inserting themselves into the situation just to play detective.

Ultimately I liked the reveal about who the murderer was, all of the scheming and long explanation of how the murders were pulled off was satisfying. I didn't fully understand / appreciate the motivations behind all the murders, that element felt weak to me but I definitely gasped out loud when the murderer's identity was revealed. I saw one review that I thought explained this book well: because this book was written to ~emulate video games / feel like a game, if you are the type of reader that is in it for the deduction and trying to solve it you would really appreciate the book; but if you are the kind of reader who is there for the story and the characters and the plot, this one was a bit more of a miss. And I agree with that, because I felt like the writing was quite sparse and I think I would have appreciated more characterization to increase my level of emotional involvement. Especially the writing of the female characters was not great. I think there were a few pacing issues too, as even though it was important to switch back and forth between the island and the mainland, this did bog down some of the momentum.