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Thank you to Pride Book Tours and Harper360YA for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This world was incredibly detailed and rich, and it was fascinating to read this story of persecution, grief and found family with Slavic mythology woven into the plot. I really enjoyed reading about the various creatures that our main character Toma encounters upon her journey - upyri, rusalki, mavki, and more. Toma was a really excellent main character, and I loved that her original motivation of finding her sister, Galina, never wavered, and I was constantly rooting for the two of them to find each other again. I also really enjoyed one of the two secondary main characters, Vanya, who was very charismatic and fun, and I loved how his personality came across.

I do wish that there had been one or two more chapters to this story, as it feels a little incomplete at the end, and the plot doesn’t wrap up until about 15 pages before the end, so I would’ve liked to have seen more of a finality for what these characters have gone through. I also wish that we had seen more emotion from the characters at times - there were moments where quite brutal, traumatic things were happening, but a few pages afterwards they don’t seem to be that affected by it, which left me feeling a bit disconnected.

However, Aden Polydoros tells stories really beautifully and I definitely want to read more from this author and to also read more stories inspired by Jewish folklore!