Despite the tropes used in this book it intrigued me. Yes we have heard the story of the poor nothing girl suddenly and inexplicably blazing up for some reason to catch attention so on and so forth. That, I honestly didn't mind. the first half of the book wasn't bad. Mare's sarcasm was fresh and enjoyable and her friendship with Kilorn was nice. 
 Fast forward a few weeks in the book and this is where I began to loose touch with Mare and began to feel frustrated with Aveyard. She starts the romantic buzz of the book with a line about how beautiful green eyed children had once been a distant improbability but now are an impossibility. Cute and it leads into the best friends to lovers trope nicely. It just goes downhill from there. With the romances being such a central part of this book Aveyard does about as little as possible to set them up or feed them. Sure Mare feels a pull toward the prince who tried to save her. That's understandable. However when we finally get to the first kiss I found myself wondering if the narrator missed a section. there's this great lead up and then their lips meet and that's it. She thinks about being his enemy and the chapter ends. 
 Now I admit, maybe I'm a sentimental fool but when two people kiss I want to feel something and the way Aveyard wrote the kisses, each quicker and more easily dismissed than the last, I felt like I should make a goofy face and hold both thumbs up like, "good job you two you touched lips and somehow that's supposed to make us think your in love!" For all the talk of love in this book there was zero passion and every time Mare said something about loving one of the brothers I had to roll my eyes. It was just not believable and for that love to be such a central part of the story line... everything else fell apart in its wake. 
 Then we get to all the things Mare can't even imagine, or doesn't even know, and by the end of the book I'm wondering how Aveyard thinks writing that much obvious stupidity and ignorance into a character that we are supposed to connect with is a good idea. I get she is playing a game she doesn't get. I understand that she doesn't know the passageways or can't read everyone's facial expressions but having the line "something I couldn't even imagine," or "whatever they were doing I don't even know." seemingly after every singly thing she may not get makes me think she's slow instead of uneducated or new to a situation. 
 Then there's all the back and forth between all the things she's experiencing and how she processes going from one extreme to the other, it made me feel like I had really bad whiplash by the end of the book. By the end I wanted to hurt Mare instead of help her. she is self absorbed, incapable of thinking straight for more than a few seconds, she loves and hates so fast it's a wonder she has any friends at all, let alone people who can stand her long enough to love her. She can't hardly stick to a decision without someone else there to back her up and she turns into a puddle way too often. 
 the best part of this book was Amanda Dolen. She was a good narrator and added emotion and intrigue to the words that for the last 30% of the book made me want to stab someone.