“Magic is the first sip of good wine that makes the edges of your vision blur. Magic is the cool breeze of the boardwalk at night and organ music in the air. Magic is landing a grand jeté and nearly going deaf with hate crowd’s applause. Magic is the low flicker of tavern lights and the girl your courting leaning close so you can kiss.”

Spending most of her time with her sisters, Marlinchen who longs for adventure in the big city has spend most of days trying to please her transphobic and tyrannical father who keeps the girls under his close guard. But, one fateful night is about to change all that as Marlinchen finally convinces her sisters to come with her on a night out and experience what they truly long for with being away from their father. This is where Marlinchien meets a mysterious dancer who captures her heart and soon her visits become more frequent and feverish and the longer this goes on, the more risky it becomes as her father, Oblya starts to become more suspicious. But, before anyone can make their move, a threat is looming and Marlinchen must figure out what path she wants to take before it’s too late.

This book was wild and I’m still not sure how I feel about it overall as there were parts were I felt like what was happening was more for shock value and not having anything to do with the plot. So that did take away from the book but I did enjoy the other aspects of it. I don’t really read a lot of horror so this was a nice surprise and I did enjoy the writing and how the author created this magical world with excellent world-building because it made me feel like I was really there. That’s something that I need to be able to invest in the story because when it’s not there, I lose interest very quickly which can take away from the entire novel itself. Another part that was a bit much for me is that it felt like the characters especially Marlinchen and Sevss were always wanting to jump into bed with one another. While I do like smut, I like it to be realistic and it just felt like she was adding it without any real purpose for it. I feel like I would’ve enjoyed it more if it wasn’t for these flaws but I know other people will so it all works out in the end.