Holy shit... Holy fcking shit....

I had waved off this book as a "booktok book" for so long after seeing it get so much hype, but I'd like to formally apologize to every time I did. 

The politic plays... the betrayals... the foreshadowing and callbacks and details and secrets, everything caught me off guard and hit me like a punch all the same every time, despite me throwing guesses and theories the entire time as I went. As soon as I thought I had an idea of where things were going, I found myself faced with a detail I had dismissed so easily when it had been staring me in the face the entire time; the phrase "anyone can betray anyone", to give one, heartbreakingly, embarassingly brutal example. The epilogue had me throwing myself across my room gasping in shock and writing Caps-lock notes into my Storygraph notes, even though I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING SEEN IT COMING. AND YET ??? 😭😭😭😭

I hope the quality holds up through the rest of the series, but one of the people I follow have rated the following books with 3-stars after this 5-star one, so I'm gonna stay cautiously optimistic. 

I have not yet finished The Cruel Prince-series (I'm still in the middle of The Wicked King), but I would assume that if you liked that one, you'll devour this book/series just as quickly.