This book was very hard to get into. I love the idea of Affinity and this idea could definitely have gone many different ways. It was very slow at the beginning and then throughout some parts of the book.

Thank you to Pelican Book Group & Netgalley for sending me this book for free in exchange for an honest review. ❤️🙏🏻

I wanted to love this book, I truly did, the cover is absolutely gorgeous and the power of " affinity" seemed intriguing! Who wouldn't want to read a story about a boy who could fix parts that were broken on another person, places that " light up" and show where the damage is and what is plaguing their body.

The book started off great, we meet Kai who is in a school classroom when suddenly both he and a fellow classmate & friend Pete get beckoned to come forward for a testing for these special affinity powers. His friend is taken ( exactly where we never really find out) , but he fools the system and goes back to his home on a rooftop of an abandoned building. Here he lives alone, basically homeless with his two kittens Riff & Raff. After feeding and taking care of the kittens, he is then on his way to accomplish whatever feat is on this secret letter that is in his pocket when he is suddenly hit by a bus.

Kai is taken to the hospital where a young girl named "Zee" who is visiting her grandmother across the hallway begins to look over him ....and this is where the two worlds collide. There is a spirit world which seems to be comparable to both heaven & hell and the real world which the characters flip flop back and forth between.

In this spirit world there are Darkounds, Lightsuckers, Tau ( God?), a river that cures all, tunnels everywhere , among so many other places & beings that you need to keep track of.

I followed the book in its entirety determined to finish it, but it seemed that every time they got back to " real life" they lost someone else. First the main goal was to get Kai to return,then they group lost Bree , then Runt, Then Zee and each time they have to go on an entire new escapade back in the spiritual realm. ( which usually lines up with a place in the real world if they press their fingers to their silver birthmarks.)

Overall I liked the story but there was SO much information that could have been saved and made into a series. Way too much happens in one book. I think that the author should have elaborated more on Kari's story with his Mom and his new friendship with this new friend Zee and her grandmother, maybe saving some people with their gifts of " light" throughout the hospital, but instead they just kept losing a person in their group.

I liked the relationship of Torn & Elden ( reminding me somewhat of Four & Eric in Divergent- being one another's competition basically and giving each other grief) and how those were getting trained to lose their light & get their own Darkound-- an entire book could have based on that part next.


Just way too much information in one book. I was really pulling for a great ending to change my mind -- but guess what Bree is alive? So more trying to save another in this spiritual realm 😭