I admit, I always look at negative reviews on GoodReads of the books I'm currently reading, to see if it is something I will like or not, so I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did.

I didn't realize this was a mystery, so that was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed that the mystery is what carried the story and not the romance. I also liked how the MCs' relationship developed and how the H had grown from when they first knew each other in training, through their time apart. To me, his change was believable and it wasn't perfect, he back-slid, but he was trying to do better. It was very realistic to me.

My only issue was with this reader, I SO didn't get that the book was taking place in what would be the Indus Valley area. For some reason, despite the miniature elephant, I was thinking Meso-America? I knew it was the past, albeit with magic, but I didn't get the correct region at all. So maybe the world building could have been a bit more, BUT I still think I was more dense than I should have been in this instance.

Trigger warnings: characters get drugged, MCs have a backstory that is shown in flashbacks of the H bullying the h, alcohol use, sex scene at the end of the book and multiple discussions of rape. This is a murder mystery, so murder by poison and fire. Attempted murder by drowning.

I also had a bit of unbelief at how, if the story the Coalition members get is that the Goddesses were raped, so the Goddesses are completely, 100% against rape and the Goddesses are how the Coalition members get their powers, that they would 1) commit rape themselves and 2) not punish, severely, any man in the Coalition who committed rape. That should be a rather obvious rule. Or at the very least, if one of them does rape someone, that the Goddesses would no longer grant that person power anymore.

So, end result? This was very entertaining for me and I really enjoyed it. This is the first of a series, with so far only one other book out. I will be hunting that one down and other books by this author. 4, better than I was led to believe, stars. Recommended if you want something different in your YA-NA love stories. Despite the rather heavy subject matter, it felt YA-ish to me. Not a bad thing, just an observation. I enjoyed the exotic to me setting and that it wasn't contemporarily placed in time. Recommended for YA readers and above.

My thanks to NetGalley and Amy Raby for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.