A Court This Cruel and Lovely

I dislike it when a book is short but takes forever to get to like anything that's said in the synopsis. Or just slow pace in a short book in general. When I started realising this had that, I started thinking of not finishing it. Once I'd started thinking that I saw the main character wasn't really making sense and the bit of the world-building I'd read also didn't add up.

For instance, the main character, Khiara, has red hair – which in this world means shes a witch. She has to hide it because that's very dangerous and she'd likely be killed. Then her red hair gets uncovered and... those who see it are... totally fine with it. All right, granted, it was in a sexual manner. Khiara was one of those characters who's written to be all fierce and “I'm going to do what I want” and the book showed none of that. Plus everything else was all tell, not show.