Isabelle Werro

Exactly.

There needs to be some sort of trauma that you go through together.

Which does, in fact, happen in this book, right?

She's thrown, like, Merrin is thrown into these trials and then does immediately kind of come upon these twins who form a very fragile relationship but do help each other in this way where these bonds are formed quite early on.

But it's not too easy.

It's also, I liked that they subverted that a little bit.

I love when they take these tropes and subvert them.

Like she meets another friend and you think, oh, here we go.

Here's the friend she's going to have.

And then immediately it's like, oh, nope.

They've fallen off.

Deb.

This is all in the early chapters as well.

She's just not afraid to get you attached to someone and then just immediately take them away from you, which actually is a good sign.

It's always the way.

Otherwise, where's the trauma?

Why are they having to take care of things themselves if they don't have a proper guardian?

If you have to find some family.

Completely.

And it's funny you bring up the trial thing because that's kind of what I wanted to say about this book is I think it does it really well.