an embroidery of souls

Rating: ★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy Romance
Length: 416 pages
Author: Ruby Martinez
Publisher: Knopf Books
Release Date: September 9th, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Jade can manipulate souls with the tug of a thread–it’s up to her, and a boy with a soul as bright as the universe to stop a creature on the loose before it claims its next victim in this lush, Mexican & German inspired romantasy.

Jade Aguilar can kill a man with nothing more than a needle and thread. Like her mother, a thread speaker in the queendom of Mérecal, she has the unique ability to stitch love, beauty, intelligence and to unravel even death. When her mother goes missing, the queen orders Jade to find her or be conscripted into a life of servitude.
Lukas Keller is desperate to feed his family and makes a deal with a vicious gang leader. Though he swore never to seek the help of a thread speaker, he’s in over his head and it might be his only option.
Jade and Lukas form a mistrustful alliance. But as Mérecal erupts into chaos and the killer closes in, they must cling to one another for survival–and perhaps . . . something more?

LACKED DEPTH.

While I do think this is appropriate for YA audiences I was missing depth for multiple aspects of the story. The romance leans towards insta-love and that is always a problem for me. I do think there were some sweet/cute moments in here, but gimme MOOOORE.

The concept of the magic system was really cool. I liked learning more about it. There needed to be some boundaries to the way it worked because every time a new issue came up, all of a sudden the magic system could fix it.

The villains and twists aren’t anything surprising and you can see from far away. I did like the writing style and would be interesting in at least trying another book from this author.

Overall audience notes: