Sigh... I'm kind of disappointed in this one. Not completely distraught but not absolutely thrilled either. There were a lot of interesting gears turning but it just never got to ignition. I just wish it had been put together better. I found the writing to be pretty good in general but I just didn't really care for the story. 
 I found several things to be entirely unrealistic. Mind you, most of the story takes place in a land called Algid where magic is a real thing. Even with that being the case, there were unrealistic things. For example, in the beginning Snow is in an insane asylum. However, she's been in there for 10 years because of one thing she did when she was 6 and sometimes she has a bad temper. THAT'S IT. What? I'm pretty sure they don't lock up children for their whole lives and drug them constantly for one incident where no one even got killed. Also, she never goes to school there. Snow even says there's no school and everything she knows comes from reading the encyclopedias in the library. HOW DOES SHE EVEN KNOW HOW TO READ IF SHE'S NEVER BEEN TO SCHOOL AND NO ONE TEACHES HER ANYTHING!? I could go on and on but I'll just stop there. On the bright side, one thing I actually did like was how Snow described all the different drugs she had to take by naming them after the seven dwarfs. 
 I think the main issue here was that Snow is a genuinely insufferable character. She's just one of the most self-absorbed characters I've even seen. The whole time, the people of Algid are begging her to help them (because she's the special snowflake prophesied chosen one of course) and she's just like "O so the King is evil and kills people... Too bad! Sucks to be you! Now why don't you help me find my boyfriend and get out of here? O and I'm going to be super ungrateful the whole time too. Sound cool?" What an asshole! Why would anyone attempt to help you when you won't do anything in return for them? It's utter narcissism. (view spoiler)[The whole reason her mind starts to change and she kind of cares about Algid is because she meets her twin sister. It literally took someone who has her exact same face to get her to care about Algid. The narcissism level here is off the charts! (hide spoiler)] Then she like has a romance with literally every guy she meets. Girl... aren't you there to find and save your boyfriend? I understand that she's been in an asylum and all so there weren't really a lot of options in romantic interests before now. But still... EVERY boy? Why do they even like her? It's entirely unfathomable to me. 
 I'm willing to put up with quite a bit if I really like the characters. The problem is that I downright loathe Snow. She's just so terrible of a person/character that I don't think I would really bother to continue on with the second book whenever it comes out. Which is really unfortunate because I think this was well written enough to get me to stick with it if I had actually liked the heroine.