Going into this book, I was expecting a epic Sapphic pirate adventure, and for the most part, that is what I got.
I loved the main crew/characters in the book: Xiang, Anh, Maheer, Captain Hoa, etc. were all lovely, and their interactions just as nice. However, I do wish that the author added more depth into the side characters. Throughout the book, we saw them interacting with each other, but we didn't really get to know them individually. This also extends to the love interest, Anh. Although we did get to see her and Xiang's story and love progress, I think there was a lot of tell instead of show when it came to Anh's subtle personality.
With that being said, I absolutely loved the romance aspect of the book. It was done really well.
As for the found family portion, I was really confused. As I was reading it I thought that the found family was quite strong, but the way Anh describes/warns Xiang, it doesn't seem to be that way.
Although I loved the adventure aspect of the book, I do think that the villain's could have been developed better. I feel like most of their reasons were pretty shallow, and they didn't have much depth to them. Especially the last 60ish pages, seemed kind of vague in terms of villain motivation to me.
All in all, this is a really good YA fantasy with Sapphic pirates, but may not be for everybody.
I loved the main crew/characters in the book: Xiang, Anh, Maheer, Captain Hoa, etc. were all lovely, and their interactions just as nice. However, I do wish that the author added more depth into the side characters. Throughout the book, we saw them interacting with each other, but we didn't really get to know them individually. This also extends to the love interest, Anh. Although we did get to see her and Xiang's story and love progress, I think there was a lot of tell instead of show when it came to Anh's subtle personality.
With that being said, I absolutely loved the romance aspect of the book. It was done really well.
As for the found family portion, I was really confused. As I was reading it I thought that the found family was quite strong, but the way Anh describes/warns Xiang, it doesn't seem to be that way.
Although I loved the adventure aspect of the book, I do think that the villain's could have been developed better. I feel like most of their reasons were pretty shallow, and they didn't have much depth to them. Especially the last 60ish pages, seemed kind of vague in terms of villain motivation to me.
All in all, this is a really good YA fantasy with Sapphic pirates, but may not be for everybody.