3.5 stars 
 June hit me with a pretty impressive reading slump, thanks to plenty of Liz Lemon-esque "EVERTHING IS THE WORST" events mixed with a few Liz Lemon-esque "Life is happening!" occurrences. It was, shall we say, stressful. But nobody wants to hear about that. 
 Siege and Storm was the first book that I finished (trust me, there were lots of started-then-abandoned books in those crazy few weeks) and I felt so relieved to have read the last page of a book that it almost didn't matter if I liked the book or not. I...liked it? Leigh Bardugo introduces an utterly fantastic new character and sorta-flirty friend for Alina. He's WAY more interesting than Mal, at least. It's a definite middle book, to be sure, so I can't wait to see if the final book can deal with all of this pent-up momentum.