The Gilded Wolves

3.25 ★
finally finished this. i've developed a complicated relationship with this book, i liked the world building and the characters (mostly), but i also grew tired of so many things. i started losing interest at around 20%, and i was pushing myself to finish this. it's a fine read, but i just couldn't get into it. i think my biggest problem was with tristan's character; i REALLY liked him but he was completely wasted in this plot, so much potential thrown away for what? half of the book? why was he even there, really? we didn't even get more depth, he was there to be discarded basically.
another thing that pissed me off were the romantic relationships they present us... séverin and laila are just. eh. i genuinely thought the romance was going to be between laila and zofia cause somehow their relationship is so much more defined and with many more moments of depth. whatever's going on with enrique's love life also bothers me, i'm supposed to believe he likes this or that person because of one or two specific moments? sorry, but you cannot expect me to believe any of these people have any romantic feelings towards each other (except laila and zofia, really i'm not kidding). and unfortunately that pulled me off from the story more times than i wish it did.
some moments, mostly action or heist scenes, including the book's in-world “magic” were confusing and i couldn't fully visualize them or understand how it was supposed to work, but maybe it was because i missed something or wasn't 100% interested in to register everything needed to understand