pretty enjoyable. i can’t believe this book made me feel bad for an ai bro. the mystery is so well done though i couldn’t look away.

okay i wish that we could hide parts of our reviews for spoilers on here like we çan on goodreads, but i'll try to keep things really vague.

i liked this. i really enjoyed it. i think the ruthlessness of the characters, especially evangeline, really serves to show how desperate they are. this is also not the first chinese art heist novel i've read, and i think i just like chinese heists lol. also, there were little details that really hammered it home. like all the food mentioned, and also that some of them were forced to/know how to play instruments?? chefs kiss

however, the twist at the end ruined it. i think the plot was great up until the end. the twist was extremely unnecessary for the story. i think the author could've gotten the same result without the twist in fact. and i know some people don't like being told there's a plot twist in reviews, and i would've spoilered it but yeah. i won't get into any more details though. the only thing the plot twist actually did was make me sad. i will be reading the second book because i like the characters, and i think everyone acted very reasonably in reaction to the twist, however i still think that if everyone was ACTUALLY in character, this plot twist would never have happened. #justicefor[redacted] (that i can't mention because of the spoiler lol)

make sure to like and subscirbe

i can't prove it, but this is white male propaganda

pretty entertaining, although i think the timeline should have been shifted so that it started and ended in later points in time. i would've really liked to see the aftermath of the last scene, and i also think that the reveal in the epilogue was wayy too late

there was slightly more stuff happening but everyone except libby was still doing almost nothing

this was entertaining enough, but everything else about it was painfully mid

when i started reading it it kind of reminded me of ready player one (don’t crucify me pls) but the ending was genuinely devastating

genuinely wasnt bad, i liked the combination of orisha mythos and fae lore, and the sibling dynamic was on point. however, i felt like it took too long for the story to actually start, there were a lot of unnecessary scenes at the beginning that imo could have been condensed. also, the beginning in general was a little bit clunky with how it set up the characters. overall not bad especially considering it was a debut novel