They say you shouldn‘t judge a book by its cover. But as I stood in front of this one in a Barnes & Nobles, I thought „fuck it, I AM going to buy it just for the cover“ and I am glad that I did. Not only is the cover a piece of art, but the story also more than satisfied my romantic, fantasy-obsessed heart that beats exclusively for badass female characters. Nox and Amaris, you have my heart. Rip it out and do with it what you must. About the book: We have two beautiful female orphans in the fantasy land Farleigh that have an incredibly strong bond, Amaris being white as snow and Nox having hair as dark as coal (alas the booktitle). The orphanage sells the two young women after many complications to a brothel (Nox) and a small army of assassins (Amaris). There, they both try to destroy the darkness that seeks into the South from the North in their own ways, but end up discovering that even appearances can deceive. But even though they are seperated, they do not stop looking for their other half, determined to find each other again. Their bond, from early childhood on, grows from friends, to family, to something else they do not quite understand yet… Normally, when the story is being told from two sides, I end up loving one character and their story and grow to absolutely hate being interrupted by the other party and their storyline, but this was one of the first books in which I absolutely enjoyed both sides of the story. If Amaris‘ chapter ended with a cliffhanger and it was Nox‘ turn, I did not sigh with frustration, but welcomed the other character with open arms. I couldn’t even tell you who I like more. That is true storytelling, my friends. Pure, beautiful love, strong characters, great plottwists, impeccable adventure and tension, amazing world-building and a hilarious dedication that had me laughing for like 5 minutes straight…what more do you want?! Honestly, go buy the goddamn book, read it, reread it and then display the beautiful cover on your bookshelf because UGH! The only thing that I could criticize is that all characters just seemed to be a little bit too perfect. Everyone is breathtakingly beauiful (a common issue with new authors, but one that can be easily fixed), incredibly brave and powerful. The characters would sometimes be like „Not everything is black and white“, but the people in the book clearly are either good or bad, nothing inbetween (black and white ironically fitting the theme of the book haha). That leads me to rate this book a decent 3.8 stars, so almost four if we‘re rounding up. PS: Some people seem to lack the ability to differentiate between author and book. An author can do some wrong things but still have written a good book. J.D Salinger was a pedophile and lots of schools still read „Catcher in the Rye“. Piper did something that isn‘t even half as bad and even apologized, so give this girl a break. This is not a plattform to hate on authors, this should be a place where we talk about books we read and liked. Smh