I started out loving this book, sure that it would blow me away. The world was creepy, interesting, and original - a dark blend of Beauty and the Beast as well as the more adult/original versions of Greek mythology and fairy tales - you know, the kind that doesn't cover up how Persephone and Sleeping Beauty are raped, or the Little Mermaid ends up committing suicide. There's a whole bunch of folklore and mythology all mixed up, shades of Tam Lin and Rumpelstiltskin, along with fae bargaining and Bluebeard's seven dead wives. 
 The best part was that Nyx isn't your typical "good" girl heroine. As the beginning of the book emphasizes, she's got a little (or a lot) of malice in her heart because of her situation. She's got family issues to the nth degree, is expected to save her entire world more or less, and basically has turned into this person who knows what good is and also knows that she'll never be good or kind or selfless, but whatever, she's just going to do what she has to do. In a way, that's what's admirable - rather than being some perfectly strong heroine, she isn't. 
 Anyway, even at a third of the way through the book, I was still loving it. But then something changed, the author lost the plot (it was eaten by a lackluster romance that can be summed up as a lot of kissing and perfect moments of the stars circling around the lovers or something like that) or just somehow lost me as a reader. About halfway through, this book just turned awful and by the end, I was speed reading as fast as I could because I simply did not care anymore. I didn't care who Nyx ended up with or whether Arcadia was saved. I already figured out long ago that (view spoiler)[Shade and Ignifex were the same person (hide spoiler)] so the love triangle was even more bleh and felt totally unnecessary/dumb. It got to the point where I simply just didn't care. I couldn't have cared less about the romance and the romance took over the entire book. The last 100 pages or so were just torture to get through but I refused to give up, although in retrospect I almost wish that I'd stopped at the halfway point when I was still in love with the world and Nyx. I still can't wrap my head around how I was so engrossed in the story and anticipating such good things and then ended up so apathetic that I could barely finish it.