Monday, March 23, 2020

Book 21: Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim

I finally managed to read this! It was a new book that I had taken out from the library and renewed so many times, and then the pandemic hit and I've had it at home for even longer. And I'm really glad I finally read it.

This is a classic YA set up: a young girl has to pose as a boy in order to gain entry at court. In this particular situation, Maia is a tailor who learned her trade from her father, and when the emperor commands that all the best tailors in the land come to compete to become his imperial tailor, she goes in her sick father's place. Once there, she goes through a Project Runway sort of gauntlet, and is aided by the court sorcerer Edan. He knows her secret, and when her reward is creating three impossible gowns for the emperor's wife-to-be, he accompanies her on her journey to make them, somehow.

There's a magical pair of scissors left to her by a relative and jealous rivals and the secrets of both an emperor and the princess warrior he's intending to marry, and it's just a really lovely read. The only thing I didn't love is that it's the first in a duology, but the second book comes out in July of this year, so hopefully I'll manage to read it sooner that I got to this one.

Grade: A

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