Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinion was not affected by the free copy.

I guess I'm going to be the first person to rate this less than three stars. In all honesty, the main reason I'm doing this is because I'm about halfway through the book and I still have very little grasp of what's going on or what the world is like. I feel like a lot is happening and I keep re-reading bits thinking I missed something. The book doesn't give much time to let characters (or the reader) stop to catch their breaths before the next thing happens.

A very good example of this happens at the very start of the book. Navarra and her sister are in town with the sister's boyfriend(?) and he decides to announce at that moment he's leaving. Supposedly this is the sister's first love and she barely reacts to this. He was also I guess a childhood friend of Navarra and she barely reacts to it as well. It's only a few paragraphs later that the sisters are back to business as usual. Unless he shows up again in the latter half of the book, the boyfriend character seems completely pointless. Either this needed to be removed entirely or the impact of him leaving needed to be heavier, and the length of time it took before the girls moved on needed to be longer. Because otherwise, it just feels like a thing the author wrote with intention of expansion, but just never got around to it.

There's also this thing about past lives. This could be an interesting concept, but for me the problem is that it's introduced on top of so many other things. And the bits of past I read didn't feel that interesting. It didn't tell me much about who the characters were in their past lives, and how/if those past lives affected the current life. The concept of a past life could be its own book; it didn't need to be here when there were other plots and ideas going on. I think it was supposed to be selling us on a past romance between Navarra and Teloh, but I didn't read any past scenes of them in a relationship. And even then, their current selves hadn't interacted much when I stopped reading-- yet already Navarra was upset that Teloh was talking negatively about her.

If I'm being especially harsh, I also just don't really care that much about any of the characters. I don't know Navarra's mother at all so it's hard to care about Navarra's goal to free her from prison. I do feel bad about the sister being ditched and her identity stolen, but again unless she shows up in the latter half, she seems almost pointless to the story. I don't know much about the other contestants except one is from a poor family and the other I couldn't stop thinking of as Vala from Horizon Zero Dawn. The last test they took didn't make sense why they all failed. Two of them were trying to be self-sacrificing and they failed because they didn't try to think of solutions that would save both. Why wouldn't you give points for a willingness to sacrifice yourself for another?

I don't want to be too harsh on this book. It will find an audience, I'm sure. I just personally found it difficult to follow what was going on between all the world-building that didn't feel fleshed out, characters who seemed pointless, and added plot-beats that threw too much into what could have been a simple story of a girl trying to save her mother. I do think this author has potential, but I think she needs to let her story slow down a little for the characters to breathe and take in situations.

The premise of this book is quite possibly one of the best things I've read so far in 2023. One of my favorite tropes is where the main character has to "fight" for the throne. In this case, Narra masquerading as her sister Kuran - sneaks her way into the competition in a last minute bid to free her mother. The book is set at an amazing pace, the characters are all enjoyable. The only thing that prevented this from being a 5/5 for me was that I kept feeling as though I was getting lost in the middle of all of this lore regarding the power structure of the realm and the way that the magic system works. Even with that feeling, it was impossible not to love this book.

5/5 stars! This book made me think of what would happen if "Sunbearer's Trials" and the "Hunger Games" met and had a book baby. I enjoyed it so much. I couldn't get over the world-building in this story and how the author made your heart break for the burdens Narra carries. This book kept me engaged and brought forth such a strong emotional reaction that I had to stop and process after finishing it. I cannot wait to pick up my next book by Tessa Barbos and this one will stay with me for a long time.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

Thank you NetGalley for the arc.
3.5 stars

I feel like this book had a higher potential of being better then it was. It wasn’t bad but by like 60% I was still pretty lost in the world building. I loved the concept but it just fell short. It was like divergent meets the hunger games but fantasy. I liked the idea of the characters remembering stuff from their past lives, but it just made me feel like I missed a whole previous book or something. But I really did enjoy the book overall besides feeling lost 😂

I wanted to enjoy this but overall found the story, characters, and plot to be something not what I was longing for or one that I would pick back up.

I was hooked from the very beginning and couldn’t put it down. As soon as I read the synopsis I was immediately intrigued. Thank you to Netgalley, Entangled Publishing and Tessa Barbosa for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

Where the greed of gods and the power of humanity intersect, The Moonlight Blade is a dark and romantic tale lush with a vibrant world, dangerous magic, and a swoon-worthy eternal love.

I was captured by this book from page one, pulled into the fantastical world, lured by Narra’s plight. Barbosa’s strong writing and beautiful imagery transported me into a unique Filipino-inspired fantasy world where gods aren’t content to rule the heavens alone and the ghosts of past selves relentlessly haunt the present.

I think what I loved most was how the expected and hoped-for pieces of this story perfectly lined up with fresh, new pieces I never could have imagined in order to create an engaging story from start to finish..

I cannot wait to see what stories Tessa Barbosa brings to life next. The Moonlight Blade is a new favorite.