I wanted to like Bitterblue as a character. I tried. She just doesn't make enough of her own decisions, and when she does, they end in disaster. The relationship between her and Saf is most interesting in the first hundred or so pages, and then it suddenly goes off in weird directions. There was a lot of plot in this book, but very little substance. I hit the halfway mark and tried to skim my way through to the end, but I couldn't even accomplish that. I made it to 80%, and I guess that's as far as this reader goes.