Ein Kleid aus Seide und Sternen

there is so much that i liked about this book: the setting, the premise and most of the time i liked the protagonist

but man, the romance did not work for me. generally speaking there were a few moments too many where the guy saved the girl and whatnot, which can be fine, she also got a few moments to shine, but in this case he just came across as way too capable, nothing is an issue for him i guess and look at the weak protagonist who needs to be protected by him!! not going to lie, i hate how often he said that he has to protect her lmao, okay my dude, we get it. (i am curious how that is going to be in the sequel)
and i didnt like their development or their chemistry :') it's a shame because i think i would have liked them a lot as friends, but the romance aspect did not work for me at all. the shift from “ohh idk about this guy” to “omg i think i love him...” happened a bit too quickly for me... i think in this case it would have been more interesting to keep it platonic for this book and only hint at romance, develop them a bit more, give us some tension, etc.

i also think some parts of the story were a bit rushed while other parts dragged on in comparison. i dont know, some of the things that sounded exciting as a concept were solved really quickly and even if they were hard or strenuous to solve, it didn't properly come across like that in the story and how it was paced

if i ignore the setting and some of the plot then this is a very generic YA fantasy novel, which isn't bad of course, but also nothing too special unfortunately. although i am extremely glad to see more and more (YA) fantasy novels with protagonists of colour and settings that aren't your standard “medieval-ish central europe” and since we don't have enough of those yet i will gladly accept all of the novels, even the “generic” ones.