Number of stars: 2 of 5

Genre: Fantasy, YA, Magic, Romance, Asian Literature

Edition: Hardcover

Synopsis taken from book jacket:

A gifted tailor in disguise. Three legendary dresses. The competition of a lifetime.

On the fringes of the Great Spice Road Maia Tamarin works as a seamstress in the shop of her father, once a tailor of renown. She dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father to court, Maia poses as his son and travels to the Summer Palace in his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she’ll take that risk to save her family from ruin and achieve her dream of becoming the imperial tailor. There’s just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.

The competition is cutthroat, and Maia’s job is further complicated by the unwelcome attention of the court enchanter, Edan, who seems to see straight through her disguise.

But nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three gowns so dangerously beautiful, it will take a quest to the ends of the earth to complete them.

My review:

I don’t know about everyone else, but often times when a publisher plugs a book as “X meets X” from pop culture such as “Spin the Dawn” being advertised as “Project Runway meets Mulan” I immediately go into the first chapter skeptical. There’s me reading with a monocle and furrowed brow peering at the pages with my most critical eye like “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight, publisher. Allow me to prove you wrong.”

However, the good news was that this book WAS very much like the love child of Project Runway and Mulan! In both the best and worst ways. Fashion, stubborn protagonist, old fathers, demanding emperors, and drama included.

Now the bad news. I waffled between giving this book 2 or 3 stars. The first portion was amazing! Totally gobbled it up. All about the Imperial tailor competition and how our protagonist Maia overcame and made gorgeous clothing despite the high stakes, secrets, palace drama and other tailors bullying her.
There was even a nod to Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn’s “unconventional materials” challenge which had me snickering, in which Maia persevered by making a pair of slippers out of hammered glass shards.

But that 2nd half. Sheesh. It started going downhill in Part 2, or Chapter 17. Maia has to go on a D&D type quest to retrieve rare materials and of course I could see it coming from a mile away that she’d fall in love with her travel companion, tall dark and wizardly Enchanter Eden along the way. No surprises there. There’s the first eye roll.
Second eye roll: I’m all for character arcs, but ouch, why did Maia’s have to take such a severe nose dive? Suddenly our protagonist goes from being a fierce girl trying to survive in a man’s world to barely being able to do anything or save herself without her man Eden saving her. She begins to make one too-stupid-to-live decision after another until I began to gag. Seriously! I wish I could be more kind, but it’s absolutely true. Ghosts and demons chasing her? Eden says “don’t look at them? Don’t touch them?” What does Maia do? Looks at them and touches them. (Smack my head).
Third eye roll. The book ended on a pile of lies. I’m just over it. Maia makes some deals with goddesses and demons and then decides to lie to the man she supposedly loves about it so that he’ll leave on yet another D&D quest without her and think that everything’s fine. WTF? Why do authors pull that s***? That is like my most hated trope. When characters lie to each other under the “guise” of love to advance and complicate the plot.

I don’t know if I want to read the next book at this point. Thanks for listening!

Rly

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