I received a copy from Nancy Paulsen Books through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When Kajal wakes up and tears her way out of a coffin, she never expected to discover her sister in a matching coffin beside hers. Unlike Kajal, Lasya is extremely dead. Distraught, Kajal decides that the best way to deal with accidentally killing her sister is to bring her back to life. Unfortunately for her, she seems to draw attention to herself everywhere she goes. It’s how she finds herself arrested in yet another witch hunt and forced to rely on the help of two rebels. Now Kajal has to help them bring the crown prince back to life so they’ll help her get Lasya’s body to a safe location for revival.
This book is absolutely amazing. I actually put the other books I was reading down just so I could devote all my reading time to this book alone. We follow Kajal in a very loose Halahala retelling soon after a terrible accident resulted in the death of her sister. From the moment she wakes up and discovers that Lasya is dead, she is filled with grief and is convinced the best route is to bring her sister back from the dead.
The best thing for Kajal to do is to blend into her surroundings wherever she goes, but she sticks out and tells people off as she sees fit. She feels very deeply and the only people she could ever count on is Lasya and herself, so we’re watching her race against time before Lasya’s soul is warped and becomes a bhuta. The only problem is that she’s become a bhuta much earlier than expected, and anyone who crosses Kajal drops like flies because the bhuta is attacking anyone Kajal gets angry with. Insert a witch hunt, some rebels, and bringing the wrong prince back from the dead and you’ve got a recipe for one hell of a story.
I absolutely loved the characters. Each of them are well developed. You can tell that even the characters that briefly appear have a lot of dimension. I really enjoyed watching the story slowly unfold and see how much foreshadowing there is. There’s only one part toward the end of the book that felt super out of place and kind of odd until you see the reason for it, and I wish that part was better planned out because it came out of the blue. I honestly thought that maybe the advance copy I received abruptly ended and that section was an unannounced preview for the next book. Then it loops back around and back into the story and now I understand why it’s there, but it was just odd and out of place for the most part. There was no foreshadowing, so I’m hoping that this is something that is edited to fit into the story better for the final copy for publication.
All in all, I really enjoyed this book and even with that one section that felt out of place, it was honestly one of my top reads for this entire year. I am so excited to read the next book when it comes out. I’m buying this book the second it drops and plan on rereading it sometime between the day it releases and whenever the second book will eventually drop.
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