A book both full of light whimsy, and heavy familial struggles. I found that Elvina's quest for freedom from her overbearing, domineering parents helped create quite a bit of sympathy for her otherwise naïve, childish (and imo incredibly frustrating) self. If anything, her behavior throughout the book was fostered by her parents. It also was just well written in a way that it actually made me sad for myself from the connections I could make to my own life! Credit where credit is due to R. R. Orange.

What I enjoyed about this book was the vibe, which really really reminded me of an adventure co-op video game (like It Takes Two!) and I can absolutely see this book as a successful video game. There's the main plot, there are side quests, there are multiple characters that you can choose from to play as, and there's mini games to help your character gain stats along the way. This vibe added a lot to the whimsy of it all, and made me very excited to find out where the story would lead.

The characters, while not quite as developed as I would have liked, have quite a bit of potential to become lovely and indepth over the course of the series, and I look forward to seeing them grow even farther!

The end however, to me, was incredibly rushed, anticlimactic, and didn't make much sense, which was disappointing, however it seems like the reason this happened is because the author was trying to give the book an opening to what is going to be the book series. I think it could've benefited from even just one or two more chapters.

There is a very odd age gap between the FMC (17 yo at the beginning of the book, 18 at the end which is two or so months after the start) and a man who is clearly meant to be part of a series long love triangle (25 yo). It would've been possibly understandable if the man was unaware of Elvina's feelings and then slowly developed his own feelings as the series went on, but he explicitly stated multiple times throughout the book while she was still 17 that he found her attractive and wanted her very badly. Very odd!! Moss-mylk and I are planning on emailing the author to see WHY that age was chosen.

NOTE OF CAUTION: R. R. Orange's blog has multiple obvious Gen AI pictures. I found this out when I started writing this review. I sincerely hope she did not use AI to write her book(s); I don't think she did based on consistency of writing. Disappointed nonetheless, and makes me a lot less likely to read the series, which I was looking forward to!