Perhaps it was a 1.5 star. I'm not sure if I liked something -anything-, in it. 
 So... 
 The world-building: utterly confusing. 
 The characters: I'm not sure what to say here. (And I don't dare messing with the names.) 
 The backstory of MC: What? The premise was interesting, it was executed horribly. 
 The love: I liked it, that until the last chapters when everything (all the redeemable of this book) blew up like a grenade. 
 The villains: *Sighs* This is ridiculous! 
 The plot: mildly interesting, with several plot holes and absurdities here and there. 
 The first chapters were great, but then it went down nosedive. 
 I was expecting exiting navigation through politics and conspiracy, playing around with poisons, with an unlikely love and a smart, tough heroine. I got a girl practicing punches with her new friends while she (not the biologists or experts) tried to discover what was the new... sort of bean that the enemy was using as a dessert ingredient. What?! 
 I'm not even sure what I wrote there. 
 It turns out those beans were important for the plot, very. It would have been an interesting thing had it not been so poorly exploited. 
 I have to admit, the dynamic between Yelena's friends-trainers was fun. I liked the tailoress character, and the cooker. (Ha! turns out I did liked something in the book.) The mean old maid was fun because she hassled Yelena. The magic system was rather interesting, as the world being ruled by militia in contrast with the monarchies or analogous that most fantasy books have. The ghost tormenting Yelena? Cool stuff. Although it could have been great, but at the end it was eclipsed by the sins of the book. 
 Valek, (the love interest) I liked him. He's complex, sort of. He has a believable personality, he's talented and (thank you) actually smart. Yelena, by the other hand, was too dim for a twenty-year-old, powerful magician with a hard past. She's just... bland. I couldn't care less for her succeeding in the story (or about her own existence for the matter). 
 But those final chapters made me cringe! Everything was nonsensical; the love declaration, the dialog, the saving-the-day stuff, the deaths, the final battle... 
 NO. 
 Verdict: If you like to spend hours wasting precious amounts of time, then fine; go ahead and read this. Personally, I think there are way better books in the genre. This book in overall doesn't work for me.