Unfortunately, this book belongs to the "great story idea, but lousy execution" pile. I'm over 50 pages in, but I have yet to see the story take off somewhere. It felt like the story was going to move when Mari gets kidnapped, but all of sudden we switched to another character dealing with their own issues.
The writing is very disorganized and lacks flow which doesn't help when there are multiple POVs in the story. The POV characters don't stand out to me nor possess any unique traits. As a result, I don't feel any connection to the main characters and the supporting cast. The supernatural elements felt tacked on and unneccessary. Reading about the dystopian stuff and transitioning to the magic stuff felt jarring in this book. I usually like reading things that mix-up genres and elements, but here in this book, it felt like two different stories were shoved together into one small box with little breathing room. The story already has an intriguing concept, a dystopia where every immigrant is tracked down by the government, that it didn't need the addition of the supernatural.
There was a great story hiding within the pages, but I'm sad that it didn't come out from its hiding place.
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