The Darkening A thrilling and epic YA fantasy novel

The Darkening by Sunya Mara is the first book in the Darkening duology and it’s a unique ya fantasy debut. The first thing that I noticed about this story was also one of my favorite parts of the book and that is the world building. In it a city is surrounded by an endless storm and that was so unique and makes for seemingly insuperable circumstances. The protagonist Vesper is the daughter of a failed revolutionist and there are quite some family secrets. Vesper is such a strong person who is also a rebel and she follows the footsteps of her parents. I really liked her as a person and especially her fierceness. Vesper is more of an anti-heroine and she wants to understand what happened to her parents and what the Storm is all about. That leads her to dangerous missions and even to get close to the prince. While all of this sounds super good, sometimes the plot and pacing was a bit off and it made it hard to follow along in the story. I also could only connect to Vesper and all the other characters were a bit pale in comparison. Overall, The Darkening is an innovative fantasy novel and only the plot was a bit lacking for me. 3,5 stars. (ARC kindly provided in exchange for a review.)