Honestly, I probably should have DNF'd when the only-one-bed trope happened so early in the plot.

The concept presented is cute - that's why I picked up the book. But basically everything past that falls flat. The banter is forced, there's no chemistry, and the pacing is really inconsistent. The main conflict pitched to us on the back of the book doesn't actually happen until after 80% of the way into the book. I get that this book is supposed to be cozy, but simply ignoring your plot until the last chunk of the book is not how you do cozy.

Ren and Pansy spend so little time actually plotting against each other or even genuinely arguing. From nearly the beginning they're attracted to each other and there's never really a friendship period - they go from rivals to having crushes on each other nearly immediately. Again, pacing is an issue here because the author keeps skipping over "ten-days" at a time, meaning we miss at least a month of the three and a half months that this book takes place over. We rarely get to see their relationship develop and are only told about it.

Not quite half-way through the book, I thought that maybe things would look up. We meet this strange wizard fellow that's sort of an inverted Gandalf (interesting idea!) and we get to meet Ren's clan. These introduce some pretty meaty issues into the world that ultimately fall flat because they're not engaged with meaningfully. Again, I know this is supposed to be cozy, but when you save confronting the deeper issues of the society you're writing about for the back twenty percent of the book, it just feels contrived and rushed, rather than a genuine exploration. It's unearned. Speaking of unearned, this book did not earn the LOTR references it made, in my opinion.

If the pacing and characters were better, I think I could forgive the more minor issues of the anachronisms and predictability. Unfortunately, they weren't better, so these aspects really grated on my nerves. Also, I think the editor just stopping caring by the end of the book because quotation marks just started disappearing.

There were definitely parts where I could see the charm struggling to push through the poor chemistry - Pig and Mushroom, the predictable but kind of cute flirting between two side characters, Ren's clan. But it's surrounded by ham-fisted dialogue, a plot that doesn't really matter, and an undeserved resolution.