Gilded Cage

What do I say about this book? I went into Gilded Cage with little to no expectations, because I honestly didn't know all that much about it. All I knew was that this book had very polarized reviews, and that it had an absolutely stunning cover. That's enough for me to want to find out how I feel about it. So, into the depths I went. I actually half read/half listened to this book and so I can tell you that both are great options. The audio may have actually been my favorite though, because the character voices were fabulous.

For the most part, I loved everything about this book. The world building was solid, the idea of magical abilities denoting the wealthy class caught my attention, and the whole concept of “days” really pulled everything together. I even loved the fact that James used his characters to show the fact that, despite how shiny it may be, a cage is still a cage. It gave me great pleasure to watch Luke fight his way through the rougher of the two situations, and yet somehow come out a better person for it. I think the character depth overall is really what sold for this for me.

However it also took one star away because I never got over the fact that the majority of the female characters here are just terrible. Abi especially got on my nerves, and nearly made me throw this book at the wall a few times. I'm just so exhausted lately by women who make bad life choices because of men. Abi, at least, was eventually mildly redeemed. She still drove me completely nuts for the vast majority of the book though. Truth be told, if things had stayed with Luke I would have been just fine!

Overall, this is an honestly solid and intriguing read! I can't wait to move on to the next book!