Rating: ★★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy
Length: 480 pages
Author: Kate J. Armstrong
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Release Date: February 28th, 2023
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

In a dazzling new fantasy world full of whispered secrets and political intrigue, the magic of women is outlawed but four girls with unusual powers have the ability to change it all.

The Nightbirds are Simta’s best kept secret. Teenage girls from the Great Houses with magic coursing through their veins, the Nightbirds have the unique ability to gift their magic to others with a kiss. Magic—especially the magic of women—is outlawed and the city’s religious sects would see them burned if discovered. But protected by the Great Houses, the Nightbirds are safe well-guarded treasures.

As this Season’s Nightbirds, Matilde, Aesa, and Sayer spend their nights bestowing their unique brands of magic to well-paying clients. Once their Season is through, they’re each meant to marry a Great House lord and become mothers to the next generation of Nightbirds before their powers fade away. But Matilde, Aesa, and Sayer have other plans. They know their lives as Nightbirds aren’t just temporary, but a complete lie and yearn for something more.

When they discover that there are other girls like them and that their magic is more than they were ever told, they see the carefully crafted Nightbird system for what it is: a way to keep them in their place, first as daughters and then as wives. Now they must make a choice—to stay in their gilded cage or to remake the city that put them there in the first place.

I LIKED IT.

I’ve been seeing this around a bit and decided to give it a go and, what do you know, it’s a solid YA fantasy. It’s got all of the hallmarks that I like in young adult books and still felt fresh enough to be a good story.

I liked this magic system and world building a lot. There’s a feminist vibe to it that I was here for and I enjoyed watching the four women come together to solve problems happening in their world. There’s definitely plenty of expansion for the next book and I’m curious how things will continue to unfurl. There’s a good complexity between religion, magic, society and more. And I SUPER loved the prohibition era take for the background of the plot.

On the romantic sides I wish there would have been more development. For a long book (nearly 500 pages) and with PLENTY of hints, tension, and flirtation, things never came to any kind of fruition. Hopefully this is a long game scenario that I’ll be happy to see in the next book.

I really liked the audiobook. I think it would have been amazing if there was a different narrator for each of the points of view, but I didn’t find it too confusing when views changed.

Overall audience notes:

• YA Fantasy
• Language: very little
• Romance: kiss
• Violence: moderate
• Trigger/Content Warnings: physical and magical altercations, loss of life, near death experiences, recounts of torture, poisoning

Instagram || Goodreads || The StoryGraph