I couldn’t help but love this book because of how enthralling the plot was to me — at times I genuinely couldn’t put the book down, no matter what I was doing. also, I have to disagree with the readers who mentioned disliking the romance subplot, since I actually thought it added a nice touch and didn’t appear that out of the blue to me. I’m not a devout fantasy reader nor the #1 dark academia fan, but even so I could really appreciate the setting and story that unfolded in the book. my biggest criticism of the book is that the author continuously decided to make her job a little bit easier by telling us how to feel about a certain character or situation instead of showing us. oftentimes, the internal monologue was unrealistically long and chewed up every event down to the smallest detail, essentially drawing all of the reader’s conclusions for them. I don’t think this was necessary most of the time, because social commentary doesn’t mean the author has to literally comment on everything that takes place in the book to make their stance clear. a bit more subtlety would have been appreciated. this bothered me the most when I actually happened to disagree with the conclusion the author was drawing, especially when it came to characterising the protagonist. if you want me to believe someone is selfish and acting out of their own ego-driven interests, I’d like to actually see signs of it on the pages, as opposed to being told so in plain text. this was a major flaw of the story in my eyes, but nonetheless, I think it’s a good read for anyone interested in stories about discrimination, social justice, and the intense efforts necessary to change both yourself and the world around you