Ugh. I must have changed my rating five different times before settling on a good, solid three stars. 
 I was SO excited for this book. It was full of intrigue, the downtrodden rising up against the over-privileged ruling class, and SUPERPOWERS. In short, kind of your typical teen dystopian fantasy novel. 
 And, let's face it, the cover is cool. 
 Did it live up to the expectations I had for it? Definitely not. Was it super terrible and a waste of six hours of my life? No. It was somewhere in between. Not really a "meh" but also not a "huzzah!" 
 I liked the story. Sure, it was a bit slow, and besides the events that are summarized in the book blurb, it takes a good 200 pages before the next big thing happens. There is also a plot twist (at the very end, of course) that I could not foresee ... because I made the boneheaded mistake of randomly flipping towards the end, to check on the page count, and ended up on the title page for chapter 27. YUP. So who knows if I would have predicted the twist or not, though I did have my suspicions about (view spoiler)[why Queen Elara even wanted Mare to masquerade as a long-lost princess, given the fact that they could have told all of the royals at the Queenstrial the thing about her utilizing technology to make it look like she had powers from the beginning (hide spoiler)]. 
 I liked the characters, for the most part. EXCEPT FOR MARE. Oh my God, never have I been more irritated at a protagonist since Harry Potter reached puberty and got all shirty. But while Harry's shirtiness (yes, I'm aware that is not a proper noun) has a reason and purpose, and he experiences some necessary character growth and maturation as a result of people telling him to stop being so self-pitying, Mare has no such growth. Except for her mother, who scolds Mare about thieving -- and can I tell you how much it IRKS me that Mare whines about how her mother prefers her sister's skilled employment over her petty crime???? Hello? DOESN'T EVERY MOTHER WHO'S NOT PART OF A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE FEEL THAT WAY, YA DOPE! -- every other character is either cowed by her snide remarks and complaints about her people's oppressed living conditions (because they are Silvers who grew up in the ruling class) or worships the ground she walks on (KILORN). 
 And what the heck is her name? Is it pronounced like MARY? Is it MAH-REY? Or ... is it MARE, like the horse? (Total turn-off, by the way.) Why didn't the editor see how bad a decision it was to spell her name like this...? 
 I won't go much more into Mare's faults and flaws, since other reviewers have summed it up pretty nicely, but yeah, she is annoying, especially for the first two hundred pages or so. The only reason I did not scrap the book from the start was because I was intrigued by the story, abilities, and how the Scarlet Guard's machinations were going to effect the Silver Court. 
 Her two (three, technically) leading men -- oh wait! one of them is SEVENTEEN -- are okay, though I infinitely preferred Maven over Cal, because Cal is kinda ... well, dull. And he has RED-GOLD eyes. ... What does that even mean? What happened to brown or green or gray? If you did not know who she was going to prefer or end up, just be aware that the trope is for the girl to be with the guy with AMAZING or WEIRD COLORED eyes. And why does he not want to smack her? I totally did, and the reader is supposed to come from the perspective and side of the Reds. *sighs* She makes some pointed comments that sound like complaints, but she makes them in the worst way possible. If you want someone who has the advantages you do not have to understand your issues as one of the disadvantaged, you do not come at them with sharp barbs and expect there to be any constructive takeaway. But since Cal is a bit complacent, at least with regards to her, he just lets all of her bratty comments slide. I think her retorts are supposed to show backbone and, I don't know, righteous indignation? But she just comes off as impetuous and irritating. 
 See, she's so annoying that I can't help but devolve into complaining about her when I initially set out to discuss another character. 
 Maven is smart and her quick companion, always there to lend an ear or a friendly hand, (view spoiler)[though he is also freaking evil, and Mare must be the worst judge of character to not even see a SMIDGEN of a hint that he was not being totally honest and upfront with her (hide spoiler)]. That said, I HATED his character growth. Well, character destruction would be more appropriate? The reasons given for his behavior and choices were not sufficient, and I was disappointed that Aveyard did not leave room for some mystery in there. I really hated that for a book where the protagonist has a very black and white mentality starting off that kind of matures into a perspective where things are more gray than she initially thought, (view spoiler)[the antagonist was just simply evil. Yes, Mare acknowledged that he truly loved his mother, and vice versa. But from the sequence in the jail and onward, he's just remorseless and inhuman. And Mare's simple perspective does not allow for the more nuanced details to come through. (hide spoiler)] 
 Probably would have been a better story, maybe with less of the melodrama, if told from Farley's perspective. Though I am itching to see exactly how and why Farley is so all-powerful. The author keeps hiding sufficient explanations for why Farley escapes so many dire situations with some scrappy comment about how she knows more than the Silvers can contemplate. Oh yeah, way to cover the plot hole with some straw - nothing's falling through that patch! 
 Overall, if you can get past the first 200 pages, the last 175 or so are worth the read just for the sequence of events - just be ready for an unpleasant protagonist.