I debated with my rating because I actually enjoyed the last third of this book. But that was the problem. I shouldn't have had to wait to read something decent at the end of the book, and after all the trudging I had to go through just to get to that spot, the return should not have been just DECENT.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the beginning of the book, especially with an opener as savage as the first few sentences. Alessandra struck me as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and was willing to do whatever she needed to do to get it. If that included trying to seduce the Shadow King, and then to kill him after to take power, then so be it! And if the Shadow King was resistant to her game, spiking up the flirtation and danger of trying to differentiate what's real and not real in the seduction, then even better! 

Unfortunately, the book didn't seem to want to focus on this game up until the halfway point. Kallias as a character was practically a non-entity for the first third of the book, finally starts becoming more active in his own story in the second third, and the third part is practically when he shines. However, he was severely underutilized as a king who can manipulate shadows at his command. Because for all intents and purposes, the power was a bit underwhelming and more of a parlor trick than anything else. I actually wish this was a dual POV because the sacrifices Kallias made didn't have as much impact, considering what he chooses to give up at the end versus what he could have kept.

And as for Alessandra, I could have done without every chapter in the first half of the book starting with a description of what she's wearing. I felt like I was reading into the mind of a girl who only thought about dresses and getting rid of the men in her life. The latter was called for, considering the slights she had faced, especially with her father and her first lover, but it just made her look vapid for most of this book. I also hated the way siblings were depicted in this story, and as competitive as she and her sister are, the real deadbeat was their father. I felt the anger and pettiness between them stemmed from the same guy, and it actually irritated me more than it should have with how the two of them communicate with each other. Unfortunately, that wasn't even the only example of sibling rivalry, and each time just left me a bad taste in my mouth.

And don't get me started with Alessandra's friends. Between the frivolity and that darn ranking system, I would have screamed if the plot had gone absolutely nowhere. Thankfully it didn't get to that point.

But yeah, the last bit wasn't bad, and when we finally did get some romance, it was good! Not stellar, but still good.