I’ll preface this review by saying I am not into sapphic romances; but if you like stories about lesbian encounters during assassination games then we might have just the book for you!

The author (Ava Reid) does a pretty good job of making you want to root for the protagonist(s), given how natural it is to want to hate the antagonist, which largely comes in the form of the generically evil corporation, Caerus and its iron cold leaders. Although, in truth, Inesa is as contemptible as a simpering weakling much of the time, and the way the characters are constantly apologising to each other almost becomes agonising— but, I suppose I get it, when characters are shy and fancy each other, they apologise for the slightest wrongs they commit—I suppose.

Also the author seems at pains to tell us why the story didn’t go in another direction when a character’s death could’ve alleviated a threat, by telling us how they couldn’t bring themselves to kill a brutal assassin who wants them dead—it’s just a tad unbelievable as everyone in Esopus Creek (the town Inesa– one of the main characters– is from) seems so heartless and affected with an inhuman quality.

That is one of my biggest gripes with the book, that no character really reflects or strives for a transcendental quality, beauty, truth, goodness, and in fact I don’t think I really liked any of the characters in the book, though I probably sympathised with the female assassin, Mel, the most, not that she was likable, far from it in fact.

Still, the plot makes for something of a riveting one: some (light) spoilers (but basic to the plot) in the city people who rack up debt may be selected for a gauntlet in which an ‘Angel,’ a beautiful female killing machine, something more bionic than human, or so we’re apparently led to believe, tracks them down and kills them in the wilderness outside the city (if they get that far anyway), all the while the show is live streamed on the internet for the callous enjoyment of modern spectatorship. I must say I never figured out where all the cameras were in the wild, perhaps I missed something somewhere, but it seemed rather fantastical that everything could’ve been filmed.

The book is largely well written, and I do think if you like YA you would probably like this book; but reading it reminds me of why I dislike so much of contemporary fiction: grim, Godless, and gay. Definitely a book aimed at entertaining rather than edifying; but I will end by saying it is not a sort of book I would recommend, as I think if one is going to read futuristic escapism, whatever the genre, it should offer spiritual nourishment, this one certainly didn’t offer much in that department, but ends with the feeling of misery consistent with a dystopian novel, and with the sense that hope is about as effective as a thimble full of water in a sweltering desert.