This book has one of the worst YA romances I've read and that's saying a lot. I make fun of the whole instant attraction/lust/love thing a lot in my reviews, but this practically had it down to the speed of an announcement. As in, the book blurb already tells you exact what will happen and when it does happen, the characters jump suddenly into *making cow eyes* and kisses. Then jump into bed. I'm not using the word jump randomly either - the descriptions and scenes are very disjointed. 
 Heck, the whole book was disjointed. I'm sure others have already pointed this out, but what is the purpose of this Sin Eating idea anyway? Why even make so much of Twylla being the Sin Eater's daughter when there's never really any explanation for what Sin Eating is or why it's really important? It boils down to being some kind of funerary ritual but doesn't matter whatsoever to the plot. 
 The Queen is evil in some really cliche ways (hunting people to death hasn't been surprising since well before The Most Dangerous Game), although I guess it might have been intentional with the random use of fairy tale elements. I'm not sure what the point of the Sleeping Prince was, either. 
 The worst part of the book was that everything happens to Twylla and she essentially just sits there and whines about it. With the description of how she has this power to kill/poison with a touch, I'm sure many fans were expecting something more like the Gracelings from Kristin Cashore or at least something but in the end, nope. I would say that I spent about 90% of the time reading this book wondering, what is the point of this scene/character/side story? Am I supposed to be feeling sympathy or something? Twylla just came off as so insipid and dumb, really, despite ostensibly having a frightening power AND a high social position as the incarnation of a goddess. 
 Aside from my pet peeve about names like Merek (fantasy names that are very similar to regular names, e.g. Derek being changed to Merek), his character would at least have been kind of interesting if he had been around at all. Not to mention, I don't understand why exactly he's so devoted to Twylla either...yes, you can explain it by saying he was very lonely as a child and thinks that Twylla can understand him because they had similar experiences, but at the same time, this is a 20 year old who's just spent 2 years outside of his kingdom actually living life, right? Yet it's hard to imagine him as a 20 year old. In fact, if the ages hadn't been given in the book, based on the actual characterization and actions taken, I would have put Twylla at 15 (still susceptible to being seduced by an older guy that actually pays the least bit of attention to her) and Merek at 17 at most.