This was a fun enough read but I was internally confused by a lot of different choices.

I really liked this book's version of star-crossed lovers and the setup in the first few chapters of who our characters are and what their goals are. It promised a lot of inherent drama, but this book didn't show me as much as I wanted where Ailesse and Bastien actually started to like each other. At one point they were a bit attracted to each other and at the next moment they were like, I love you, I couldn't imagine anyone else as my soulmate (lol foreshadowing), etc etc without showing us many conversations between them that weren't just like teaming up to survive life-threatening situations. Which I mean is fine, they're like 17 and thought they had only a year to live, let them jump right into things, but this leads me into my next point where if I can be so bold as to predict it, this ship is gonna be tossed to the side next book and somehow we're gonna get Ailenne and Prince Casimir together and Sabine and Bastien will be the actual real soulmates. And I think I'm gonna hate it because these characters have never interacted before and I'm always too attached to the original relationship and I don't like Casimir at all in this, in his brief appearance he comes across as an idiot with absolutely no redeeming qualities and there's no way Ailesse can be his bone crier queen or give him a bone crier heir like he needs, just not having it. But this is just speculation.

Multi-POVs can be hard and maybe you could say that the fact that different characters can show you different understandings of what's going on is a potential advantage of this POV system, and I could agree with you, but it can get annoying how our 3 POV characters are CONSTANTLY running right in and spoiling things for each other and working against their own best interests. For example, I do not understand why Ailesse didn't tell her trio of kidnappers right away that the bone flute was needed for good reason or else hordes of ghosts will suck the life out of random townspeople. Like REALLY spell out the consequences. Because as it is it's unclear whether they did or didn't already know that and if they did and ran away with it anyway, we need to address the fact that they diverged from their righteous protecting the town from bone-criers motivation and switched to a **** the town, Bastien's life is all we care about motivation, which again is fine, it makes sense, but the way we went about it, during that full moon (new moon?) land bridge scene I could barely figure out what literally anyone was doing, why they were doing it, and what the geography of this whole crazy battle even looked like.

In general, basically no idea what was going on with the matriarch at any point. She is an antagonist figure for sure but I don't think her role was utilized in the best way here. I was also confused about Sabine sometimes like she was judging the matriarch for praying to the underworld god and saying how she was failing the bone criers as a matriarch for that and then she just like runs off and prays to the underworld god herself? Like it ended up being the right thing to do I guess but I am also just confused how the gods work a little bit. Also in our like anti-violence vs necessary evil conflict its interesting how we get a golden jackal that's just confirmed put on this earth to be killed and nobody voices support for letting the poor scary wolf live. I mean that unironically no I was actually really interested in Sabine's hunt for grace bones and her growing bravery when Ailesse is in danger, like maybe I am pro hunting sharks after all. That was a cool scene and the whole thing about getting different strengths from different animals and you have to be smart about it is cool lore.

Anyway this got bogged down in me listing ways in which this book confused me but I did like reading it. Good intial premise, world is pretty cool, and the plot did hit some of the fun twists the premise could've been setting it up for in some interesting moments. And the world building of the bone criers is interesting to me if occasionally confusing. It's always a good sign if I'm asking questions. Like are the bone-criers nocturnal? If not, why not?

3.5 stars

Bone Crier's Moon - Likewise Book Reviews

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