*I received an ARC of GILDED CAGE from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 
 Okay.... what. 
 Good premise, meh execution, but Savannah = confused. 
 Let's get the not-praise over with first: 
 -What time period is this set in? This is the book's biggest fault. We have advanced technology, but one of the characters' living relatives fought in the Civil War? WHAT? 
 -Too much politics with too little explanation. Who the HECK knows what's happening with the politics? Not me. 
 -The interesting characters (Silyen, the Doc) weren't mentioned very often. Also, very interesting plot twists (view spoiler)[(the Doc & Angel are Equals?!) (hide spoiler)] were briefly mentioned. 
 -The ending is SO RUSHED. 
 -This book doesn't even have an excuse to be confusing. Like, if it was high fantasy, I could get that; there's a lot of characters and plotlines in it. This book, NO. The reader is expected to know a character name after one mention of it. 
 -I honestly have no idea what half these characters look like. 
 -O strong plot, where art thou? 
 Enough of that... let's get to the good parts: 
 -SILYEN. Oh, my, GOSH. I probably shouldn't like him as much as I do, but he just seems so complex and wonderful and I ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE. (At least, I think I do.) 
 -I kinda wanna read on? Kinda? The cliffhanger was more like a steep decline: scary, but manageable. Like, I don't really need to know what happens next, but I'm fairly interested. 
 -Silyen. 
 -I was... entertained. Now that I'm typing this, I realize it shouldn't be a thing that I should have to look out for. It should be a given for every book. But it held my attention. 
 -I liked Abi, but she was just... weird. I don't know. At least she has morals. 
 -I liked Daisy! (If that's her name? It is, right?) 
 -Have I mentioned Silyen? 
 A lot of the parts of this book were in the middle for me. For example, the writing. It gave the story the bare minimum of what it needed to be an actual story, but it also caused the characters to seem off sometimes. Maybe it's just me, though. 
 I don't want to discourage you from reading this book, but I think there are better things out there. I feel like this story would have come across as less confusing in a different media. All in all, a solid 3 stars.