(Also read in audiobook, so I have no clue on the spellings and am taking a guess on those.)
Princess Nalia finds out the day after her sixteenth birthday that she’s lived a lie her entire life. A prophecy said that the king and queen would only be able to have one child and she might die before she turned 16, so a ringer baby was substituted in and the original was raised anonymously in a convent. Now that the original Nalia has thwarted the prophecy, the false princess–now referred to by her given name of Sinda–is quickly kicked out, with a small bag of gold (enough to support her for a year) and a few dresses, to go live with her only surviving relative.
Now that is fucking COLD. We never find out what it was like for Sinda to be raised by the king and queen (if she was), but these people can’t even say “thank you for your service” or “we loved you” or anything beyond “I’ll pray for her.” COLD, COLD, COLD and oddly enough, it’s only the villain of the piece who even comments on this! The king and queen had no contact with their biological kid and I wonder if they even tried to attach to the one she had, assuming they just had her to get killed in their kid’s place. (This is all the weirder considering that nobody actually tried to kill the public princess for sixteen years.) I think the author should have covered that, but alas, she did not. Sinda’s trauma is hard for her to figure out, and she tries to be stoic, but she’s so accommodating that she doesn’t even protest what happened, and that’s something that’s commented on.
We find out that Sinda’s mom abandoned her after birth, her father was depressed and agreed to give her up, and her aunt isn’t mean, but she’s very taciturn and not a welcoming or loving personality. Sinda is forced to live the life of a peasant when she has no working peasant skills or talents, and the only guy who’s interested in her just wants her for her former status. It’s not going very well when surprise, she busts out with magic! Turns out her abandoning mother had magic and her aunt was hoping it wouldn’t manifest. But now that the impersonation spell put on Sinda is wearing off, her own natural magic starts busting out all over. This catapults Sinda into a better life. She can’t join the wizards’ college because she’s a broke peasant, but she does find herself a lovely eccentric mentor, Philantha, who I thought was great and should have been more involved in the plot than Sinda lets her be, alas.
Sinda also reunites in the city with Kiernan, her longtime best friend/obvious soulmate who she’s never gotten romantically involved with (or even really conceived of doing so) given their past differing status, and now current differing status. It’s very obvious that Kiernan is ride-or-die for her, no matter how clueless she may be or how she periodically freaks out and tries to drive him away or thinks he’ll walk out on her after a brief incident. (Everyone else in the book is all, “girl, get a clue!”) Per Kiernan, who’s still at the castle, she finds out that the current princess wants to meet her, and that girl (previously known as Orion) sneaks out to do so. Sinda’s surprised that the two of them feel a literal pull towards each other as a result of the spell put on them for making Sinda resemble Nalia.
But after feeling the pull to go to the castle one dawn, Sinda comes across something that totally tears apart everything she’s been told about this situation. The kingdom’s about to make a giant mistake, and Sinda and Kiernan realize that they’re probably the only people who can investigate what went on, and that they’re not likely to be believed.. Sinda does need to let other people in more (and it’s kind of irritating that she adamantly refuses to let her mentor in on the issue), and she does need to figure out what her motivations are here for saving a kingdom that wasn’t the nicest to her, all things considered. I did enjoy the mystery of what had happened and how S&K had to investigate it–involving psychic powers, lies, magical ties and a longstanding grudge. It works.
Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this book. Even if Sinda’s behavior gets a bit “oh girl, don’t do that!” for her and well, everyone, the mystery is cool and the book works, even if I think a few things could be elaborated on more. Nice resolution, too. Four stars.