this book caught me off guard. I picked it up cause I heard it was a mulan retelling, and off the bat it is not, it has similar plot lines but it very different.

first of all, the love interest plot threw me for a loop and i felt as if their relationship came out of left field. There was absolutely no development of their relationship and suddenly when he finds out she’s a girl, he’s suddenly all nice and caring.

the female character reminds me of juliette from shatter me (need i say more). her choices are stupid and she risks her whole plan to kiss a guy that she hasn’t interacted enough for us to be all invested in their relationship.

the idea i got from this story is that men always want to be the savior, they think they can save you from all your problems. before the love plot, this book was good, the writing really pulls you into the world of feudal japan. I will say the ending did pick up, and if i ignored the weird interactions between the main characters, i enjoyed it. I did not expect the plot twist and there’s definitely a set up for the second book but i think I’m going to pass.


edit: i think the reason why i don’t like this is that it’s Stockholm syndrome, the main female character gets “kidnapped” by these men but she wants to learn more about them, but she interacts with this one guy and then suddenly falls in love with him ????