I generally don't like marmelade, but somehow this book makes me want to get some and eat it on a delicious roll while continuing to read. Does anyone else experience that? With this book or another?

Basically the title. I think the premise of this book is very interesting and I’ve heard good things about it but I didn’t really enjoy The Inheritance Game by the same author. It wasn’t bad per se but I thought the brothers and the MC relationship with them wasn’t that great and I also couldn’t connect to her as a character. So I’m wondering if I still should give this book a chance

can someone go ahead and tell me what chapter it starts getting good? no offense to SOC fans but its been two days and I'm only on chapter 5😭😭😭

Why does Kiela think her mom hated Caltrey? It seems like she only thinks that because her parents left it for Alyssium. But I have a theory that they left for another greater purpose (maybe they were killed in pursuit of that purpose? How long ago did they die & could it be related to when the emporer stopped sending the sorcerers to the island?) Everyone on the island seems to hate the city or at least they don’t like it very much, so I don’t think her parents would have willingly moved there for no reason.

All that aside, Kiela says her mother loved Alyssium & was so excited about her own window box of flowers when she had a huge garden on Caltrey. I bet her mom actually didn’t like Alyssium one bit. She probably missed Caltrey so, so much & she was just doing the best she could to find little ways to bring a touch of Caltrey to Alyssium as a comfort to herself. She probably didn’t want Kiela to know how much she truly missed home & so she put on a brave face for Kiela’s sake. 🥺