Filing this solidly under "meh." It was a book. There was fantasy. There was romance. It was formulaic, at best. The most interesting thing it had going for it was the Leonardo DiCaprio-ass plot point where the FMC is fated to die at 27 (which, like, yeah), but that wasn't even really explored by the book. I think I'll read the next one only because of my compulsion towards series completionism, but honestly if someone just texted me a paragraph summarizing the plot of the rest of the books I'd probably be satisfied by that.

The first half was a bit slow and repetitive but I enjoyed it a lot

Some stories have so much potential, which makes the disappointment bite a bit harder.

What kept me invested is Tasha Suri's writing. Exquisite in detail, lush and evocative, Suri's prose is masterclass in how stories should be told. Her imagery embeds so much emotion, it's almost feels magical. All fairytales have their hidden meanings, their underlying message of the powerful and the brave, good vs. evil, but the best stories have the reader continuously reexamine who is this story for. How much truth lives in the stories we tell, who benefits, who is erased, and the power and privilege it is to say what stories get to be told.

Unfortunately, even beautiful prose did not save this for me. While the story was properly being shown not told, the character development and pacing fell flat in ways I craved for more. Simran and Vina are deep characters, their circumstance, their pain is so tangibly known on the page, yet I also felt like I barely knew them by halfway. This is a story within stories within stories within stories, and sadly the pacing unstably affected the character arc from developing appropriately; the curse of the fated time-loop. Simran and Vina are memorable and while I enjoyed the moments between them as they were happening, my heart and head weren't in it the rest of the time .

This is a case of the writing is good, but you can feel how it could be better, so you will continuously read the author with hopes for the next.