Oh, what a lovely Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling! (Even though of the twelve dancers only two are princesses).
The twists to the original tale are excellent and the red herrings totally kept me guessing. It was a huge surprise to find out who is to blame for the curse on the princesses and their fellow dancers from the Orovian Royal Ballet corps, not to mention for eleven missing noblemen and princes who'd tried to solve the mystery previously.
Isadora is a wonderful character, full of flaws and still quite plausibly naive, but who grows so much throughout this tale and becomes a character I could totally get behind. Anders, I adored from the start. I liked how he thought solving the mystery would be a piece of cake and the longer it takes him to solve it the more determined he becomes to do so, not for his sake, but because getting to know more about what's going on makes him sympathetic to the plight of all the others involved. I really liked that about him.
Isadora's sister, Livia, was a lot of fun. She's a good off-set for Isadora's personality and their sibling banter was fun. The ten other dancers get one scene where they're actively involved, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse of prejudices and other elements of the worldbuilding that came through in their banter, not to mention the light-hearted moment before things got really dark and mysterious.
If you enjoy mysteries with amateur sleuths and fantasy, you'll definitely want to give this one a try! There are some fabulous elements of magic that add so much to the worldbuilding and the characters are fabulous.
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