Book Review: Spin the Dawn (The Blood of Stars #1)

Spin the Dawn
Elizabeth Lim
5/5

Overview

Let me start by saying that this book is advertised as a crossover between Project Runway and Mulan, on that basis I don't really think there's any way I couldn't like it. I was like how could you possibly mix the two, Elizabeth Lim did that though. Maia has three brothers, but she's the only one talented enough to even consider taking care of the business. She has been studying her whole life, though tailor is not a career offered to women. When the emperor demands her father or brother's presence, she takes their place to bring honor and wealth to her struggling family. She has to compete against ruthless tailors who don't even know her gender, she has to impress a foreign princess, it's fighting without combat.

That's just the first half of the book too, we get to see so much more in her quest for the ingredients to create three mythic dresses. I love Maia because she's traversing the country and dying of heat stroke and demons, but the whole time she's also working on the bases of these three dresses. There's a strength and fortitude to her character that feels entirely genuine and I love it.

The romance is equally amazing! I feel like it's hard to create romance in a book with such obvious quests, because I want the heroine to finish the quest and the romance feels distracting and irrelevant. Not here, the romance is perfect in every way. They care for each other, neither of them are too stuck-up to admit it. He cares about her father's opinion of him despite his role as an all powerful enchanter, that just felt so cute and perfect to me. I'm really trying not to spoil anything, there were so many great surprises in this book. It's a beautiful blend of cultures, you see shoutouts to a few fairy tales and myths and it's just so original.

Would I Recommend?

100 percent for sure. I was recommending it to people before I even finished it, there's just so much to love about this book. I don't know how I'm going to last until the sequel comes out I literally can't wait. Believe the hype about this book because it completely deserves it.