E-ARC and Audiobook ARC generously provided by St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much NetGalley!
Publication: August 5
Narrator: Ana Osorio (Where else have I heard her? Well, she has also narrated “What the River Knows” & “Where the Library Hides” 🙌)

Intricate, fascinating and detailed world building. Unique fantasy world origins & description.
Latinx inspired
Gods
Necromancy
Mystery. Secrets.
Fantasy with romance subplot (I would argue this is not romantasy)
MMC has high (religious) morals/ convictions and doesn’t like that he grows go like the FMC
Multiple POV
Flashbacks/time jumps that add and reveal the story piece by piece - I’ve seen some critiques of this in others’ reviews, but I liked this pacing.
This is definitely a high fantasy book that requires commitment to jump in and follow along, but once you’ve warmed up, and if you keep pace, is immersive and alluring. I loved and appreciated that I had both a physical E-copy of the book to follow along with as I listened to the audiobook! The audiobook allowed me to stay focused and follow along with the pacing in the book. I could fully absorb, learn and follow the names and world building. Highly recommend audio + physical when reading (high) fantasy. Ana Osorio was an awesome narrator!
I will admit that it took a little bit for my head to wrap around all the new terms, names and lore but once I got into the groove I really enjoyed this fantasy world and plot!

Mistress of Bones has an intriguing dark fantasy premise, lush world-building, and engaging characters, but the storytelling didn’t fully click for me. The nonlinear timeline and constant POV shifts made the plot feel disjointed, and I often found myself trying to untangle the timeline instead of enjoying the story.

Despite this, the sisterly bond, betrayal, and Spanish mythology elements kept me interested, and the prose is beautiful. A promising start to a duology, but one that might work better for readers who enjoy piecing together complex, fragmented narratives.

I loved the idea of this book, and the cover was so fitting. However, reading it was just not for me. The multi-POV and going back and forward in time made it too hard for me to truly connect with and care for the characters. Since this was Fantasy and not romance, I was expecting more world-building and less focus on so many characters that I lost count.

Two stars for such an amazing book/plot idea and interesting start of the characters. Personally, I just wish it had been more polished to make it easier to keep up and connected with the main character. I wish I could have given this book a better review but it was not for me.

Recommended to fantasy readers who like character-based story lines and multi-POV.

Mistress of Bones follows a necromancer desperate to resurrect her sister and the Emissary of the Lord of Death who is determined to stop her. Biding her time, she must help him identify another nearby necromancer, in a land full of political intrigue and the bones of the Gods.

The mythology and magic system is so interesting and really unique, but I struggled to connect to the characters, which is a problem as a character-over-plot kind of reader. The narrative is built around so many POV and timeline shifts that I never felt connected to or like I had a good understanding of who anyone was, even the main characters. For the longest time, the character I felt like I had the best grasp on was the dead sister. I knew their goals and their goals were driving the plot, but I didn't really feel anything for them, so I wasn't invested in whether or not they succeeded.

And although I love a good flashback, I think the story would have benefited from spending more time in the present (as an early example, I would have liked to have been with Azul's perspective when her sister died, rather than the Emissary's perspective learning of the event).

I know that I can struggle with the first book in a new fantasy world and that it can take time for me to warm up to the world/characters, so I did keep that in mind as I was reading, and I was already thinking through most of the book that it was likely going to be one of those books I was kinda lukewarm on but then really enjoyed the sequel. But that last 20% or so!!! I am now so impatient for another book and cannot wait to see how the story expands!!!

If the premise sounds interesting to you, I do think that you should give this one a chance, and I am genuinely looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Thank you for this gifted ARC from Maria Z. Medina via NetGalley!

Azul has a secret. She can bring people back from the dead with just a small piece of their bones. She saves her sister this way, but the god of death doesn't take kindly to this. A visit to his lands results in her sister's second death, death's emissary chasing her and her desperate to find her sisters bones again...

I enjoyed the overall story, though not everything worked for me. Azul is a young character, and she makes all the mistakes they normally do, thinking they know better and everything will just work out. Despite that, she is a good character and does learn as she goes.

Our emissary for death doesn't feature enough, and I felt we didn't get enough of his story. There is a little bit of romance there, but not sure what the point was in the end... But I did find the gods and their influence/background interesting. Especially towards the end of the book.

The story starts well, but for me, it lacks content in the middle. It gets better again from the 70% mark. A good mix of characters, and there are multiple viewpoints to tell the story but the names of some of the characters were too similar and I had trouble keeping them straight.

The ending was interesting enough that I will read the next installment to see what happens.

⭐️ 2 stars ⭐️

A big thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Expected Publication Date: August 5th, 2025

I wanted to like this one, I really did, but I couldn’t connect with the plot at all. The concept is great: necromancy, gods, using bones to bring people back to life? It’s all right up my alley, but the execution is disappointing. I even found myself skimming after a couple chapters. The lore dumping at the beginning, the amount of characters introduced (with no apparent reason to consume space on the page), the POV and timeline jumps… this book is messy to say the least and it made it impossible to actually understand and appreciate the world-building, politics, and characters. I feel like I read the bare-bones (pun intended lol) version of an epic fantasy novel. With a bit of fine-tuning - a more concise timeline, more focus on developing the actually important characters, and more organization - Mistress of Bones could be fantastic.

also a little nitpicky, but why do blurbs bait readers with popular books like Six of Crows when the book is in no way similar to Six of Crows?

"Mistress of Bones" is a unique YA fantasy that captured my attention due to it involving necromancy & sisterly love, much like another book I read & enjoyed ("We Shall Be Monsters"). I was very excited going it but to be honest, it was quite disjointed & confusing, like I'd been thrown into the middle of a story, left to flounder. I usually love multi-pov novels but it just did not work for me with this book, nor was I a fan of the bouncing timelines. I struggled a lot to finish this book & the only reason I pushed through was because the story was engaging enough that I wanted to see how it ended. I do think this series (duology?) has great potential if it was cleaned up a bit & that is why I would read the sequel.

I think this book had a very promising premise. It was unique, interesting, and promised everything I like out of a fantasy book. Unfortunately, I think it just took too long to execute. The beginning was a bit too slow for my liking, and I struggled to connect with the characters and the plot. I think with editing to make the storyline flow better, it would be exceedingly helpful.

There were so many promising things about this book but I needed the author to write another 100 pages to explain how we got from A to D to F. I really liked Azul but I think we followed too many other perspectives to fully grasp their identities. The middle of the book cat-and-mouse was repetitive and drawn out. I hope we get a second book to clarify all of the questions I was left with after the epilogue.

A dark, thoughtful look at two sides of the same coin: a necromancer who raises the dead by imbuing a bone with a shred of her soul against an emissary of Death who sees necromancy as an affront to the Lord Death.

The world-building was quite interesting with the Anchor and how various societies view it alongside the Gods (or lack thereof). Enjoyed the intrigue of the Faceless Witch we're introduced to while her machinations and reasons behind them remain frustratingly unclear. Our protagonist, Azure del Arroyo, is mostly a one-thought character as she pursues all avenues at her disposal to resurrect her sister, changing tactics as she hits different types of roadblocks.

The introduction of chapters from other characters' points of view first started off frustrating - who is this person in relation to the characters we have already been introduced to? What is their purpose within the plot? It was also difficult to separate these new characters sometimes as they cropped back up, and I would have to try to remember where this character has been and with whom they've had interactions with. Although these additional viewpoints and characters are important to the plot's progression, I feel a slightly better way would make it easier on readers to keep them straight.

Overall, it was a solid read but left me feeling a bit 'meh' at the end, with only a tremor of excitement for what happens in the sequel.

What I Enjoyed:
- the world-building including the different Gods, Anchor, and how different societies view both
- Azul's necromancy and how it works (a slight unique take on this sort of power)
- the twist that occurs roughly toward the last 25% of the book

What Could Be Changed:
- the introduction of other characters as the new POV chapters made identifying them difficult at times
- Azul's singular focus on wanting to resurrect her sister (every action and decision she takes hinges on this)
- various subplots and reveals cram the last 25% of the book, causing the middle half to be somewhat slow in plot progression

Note: I decided to DNF this book at about 85%. I wanted to love this book, but it didn't really land for me.

What I loved about this book:
- The writing is lush, for lack of a better word. I found myself swept up in the author's descriptions, easily able to picture the scene they were painting. Details were mentioned enough for me to have a clear picture of characters and settings without bogging down the flow of the narrative.
- The world seems REALLY cool. The gods' bones, the religious system, there's TWO MOONS. It's all very interesting and felt fresh to me!
- The focus on a sisterly bond. I think a lot of books have been cashing in really heavily on the romance aspects of stories and I loved that this book's whole plot is predicated on Azul's desperation to bring her sister back.
- The FMC (to an extent). I appreciated that Azul was straight up like "I'm obvious, but I'm not thoughtless". We love a self-aware queen!
- The themes of life & death. I think the author is exploring some really cool questions with this story - what makes a person a person? What is a soul? Who are we to "cheat" death? If you could bring back people you love, would you? Azul in particular is interesting as she is so tied to death, but Enjul says that everything is dying EXCEPT her. Plus we explore this theme with Azul's mom, the gods, and the other necromancer's approach to bringing back people.

What I didn't love about this book:
- The pacing. I felt like the timeskips and POV changes really killed the momentum for me in this book. I usually enjoy a good multi-POV book, and I'm fine with flashbacks, but the timing of some of the changes threw me out of the story.
- It often felt like I didn't have enough information to fully appreciate what was happening in the story. Something would be revealed and I'd say "I'm sure that's important, but I don't know why yet!". It's worth noting I LOVE the locked tomb series, so I am no stranger to being in the dark with our characters. HOWEVER this feeling combined with the pacing issues made me slip out of the story pretty easily.
- The romance. I think the author did a great job writing the ~tension~ between Azul and Enjul in that scene where he's in her room and they're physically very close. However, I didn't really buy the chemistry or emotional connection AT ALL. My dislike of the romance was exacerbated when at one point, Enjul is daydreaming about what he thinks Azul's mask should look like when she is by his side in the future. When he KNOWS she doesn't want to go with him and would want to be with her sister. I felt it was pretty creepy behavior, personally.

I thought about DNF'ing around the 50% mark, but read in reviews that there was a twist at 60%. I kept reading, and I will say, the twist had me invested again. However, my excitement pretty quickly dwindled. In fact, when one of our main characters suffers a fatal wound I found myself saying "okay, anyway", which was my cue that perhaps this book was simply not for me. My TBR is simply too long for me to read books I'm not hyped to be reading.

I do feel like this book had a lot of imaginative elements, and I really enjoyed the author's writing, so I'm landing on 3 stars. I would read other books by this author in the future.

I think this book would be great for someone who wants a fresh new world, lush writing, and who readily gets invested in romance plots (particularly if it's 'enemies to lovers').

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The book was really engaging and smooth to follow. I found myself invested quickly and the whole book in once sitting. It got a bit slow near the middle, but it picked up again and ended strong.

This just was… NOT great. I genuinely would not recommend this, and that’s saying a lot for a book that had an incredibly interesting premise and blurb.

This was a DNF for me at 60%, which is why it earns 2 stars that I made it that far. That being said, it was tough. While I really, really wanted to love these characters, there was almost zero value to any of them.

I feel like the base of the plot, resurrecting her sister, was barely even glanced at, much less explored. And what WAS explored was confusing at best. Nonsense at worst.

The cover was the best part about this book.

Thank you to St. Martin’s press & NetGalley for an advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book completely captivated me. I was all in on Azul's journey, her self-discovery, her unraveling power, and the mystery surrounding her sister’s bones had me hooked from page one.

Maria Z. Medina masterfully wove a story full of magic, family secrets, and emotional depth. And that twist about her family?! I did not see it coming. Just when I thought I had things figured out, the ending hit me with a cliffhanger that left me gasping.

This was such an atmospheric, haunting read, and I genuinely didn’t want it to end. I need book two ASAP.

Thank you to NetGalley and Maria Z. Medina for providing me with a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Mistress of Bones by Maria Z. Medina is a third person multi-POV nonlinear YA fantasy. Necromancer Azul can bring anyone back from the dead as long as she has one of their bones and she offers up a piece of her soul. Now, she wants to bring back her sister Isadora. But she sets off a web of complex politics and gets her the attention of Enjul, the Emissary of the Death God.

The world feels inspired by Renaissance-era Spain and the naming reflects that fairly strongly. The Death God is the only one that is deeply revered in a very specific way and has the most representation, something like a patron god of a city though the Death God is not quite a patron god here. The use of religion in the worldbuilding and how that connects to Azul’s necromancy is very cool and a fun twist on the necromancer concept.

Enjul and Azul have a romance brewing but it’s more of a slowburn rather than love at first sight. They start to notice little things about each other but don’t act on it and don’t even seem to realize what those moments could mean. Through other characters, such as Nereida, there are other romantic plotlines and threads, but nothing that would put this in Romantasy territory. All of it is more subplot or backstory or just a passing mention.

The timeline is mostly linear, but some chapters do open with scenes from as far as twelve years ago when Azul first met her half-brother to as little as forty-five minutes before the chapter takes place. Every scene adds backstory or texture to the scene rather than serving as a proper dual-timeline. Given that this is a multi-POV book in a lot few pages than something like ASOIAF, it makes sense that there would need to be little tricks to make all those POVs fit in without feeling superfluous.

I would recommend this to fans of YA fantasy with a slowburn romance and readers of YA looking for more Spanish-inspired fantasy

DNF at 68%, unfortunately. The general premise of this book is very interesting - a necromancer and emissary of the Lord of Death - but the execution of the story was what got me. The constant and multiple POV changes along with the time jumps basically every chapter (and sometimes even within the same chapter) really confused me and made the read feel very disjointed and hard to follow. I found it hard to just keep track of characters and remember who was who, which I don’t think is ideal especially when intended for a YA audience. Time jumps of 45 minutes prior seem a little unnecessary - Writing more linear with more major / significant time jumps to the past is what I generally prefer.

That aside, the magical elements that I read about I did enjoy and found quite intriguing! There were also a decent amount of deeper conceptual / reflective quotes I found myself highlighting which I liked.

Overall, not for me, but definitely has potential to be enjoyed by others! Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this as an e-arc ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review.

—

Tropes:
💙 Multi-POV
💛 Necromancer x Emissary of the Lord of Death
💙 Gods
💛 Bone Magic
💙 Young Adult Rated (YA)
💛 Rebellions

despite a delightful premise and stunning world building, the execution of this story didn’t land where i was hoping for it to go.

first, let’s understand this is NOT a romantasy, ya or otherwise. this is plot driven fantasy, which i adore, but was misrepresented by the classification of this book. there are three potential love stories in this book and not one single one ends up with a kiss. and i love a good slow burn. there’s zero tension. zero passion. zero longing. noticing some beautiful eyes or a brilliant mind is NOT equal to falling in love.

i was immediately drawn in by the concept of this book. the worlds built on the bones of their gods, the conflicting world views and religions, political intrigue and deaths … it was all an excellent start. however, it was derailed quite quickly by an enormous cast, several of whom made no emotional or story impact whatsoever. i LOVED the narrator, however names were so similar in pronunciation it was often difficult to recall who people were (this i assume would be rectified by a visual of the names) and how they fit in to the story. i went an entire chapter thinking someone was a brand new character only to realize they’d been introduced chapters earlier. the constant bouncing back and forth in the timeline added to the layered confusion and, at the finale of the book, i still do not understand what exactly it was about. which is so unfortunate because i wanted to adore it.

to wrap up, i think this book has good bones (haha) but needs more time with a developmental editor to polish up plots and storylines. i’m intrigued enough to read a sequel, but it definitely won’t be a priority book.

The premise for this book was SO GOOD but the writing fell flat. I felt absolutely zero connection to the characters- maybe a little for Enjul as he seemed to have the most emotion. The writing was clunky and lacked sophistication. There were so many simple sentences. I was getting upset with the amount of sentences that started with a preposition, which is unusual for me because usually I don’t care at all… but I just couldn’t continue with the writing style.

The world building took a good while to understand. I still found myself confused as to who was who. A glossary or something of that sort would have helped me. The constant change of POV was confusing.

To summarize: the story itself was interesting, but the writing and world building was just not for me.

Thank you Wednesday Books for the egalley!

Conceptually, this is the coolest book I've read this year. You've got necromancers, the bones of gods, floating cities, and tangled politics with multi-POVs, plus a heroine I absolutely adore and a love interest who's magnetic in his scenes with her. Execution-wise, it falls apart sometimes, but the glue that holds it together is pretty tight for everything it's got going--we'll get there, though.

First, the things I love:
-Medina's worldbuilding is so, so good. Even without a map or guide, I immediately understood her lore and the ways that magic, gods, and humans all tie together in this world. The city of Cientpuentes/Cienpe was quite possibly one of my favorite fictional cities I've read this year, and the way she writes brings everything to life so vividly. I liked that we got (what seems like) a Spanish-tinged fantasy world rather than your standard medieval Europe, so huge plus!!
-Likewise, I really enjoyed the magic system and I liked how our main character, Azul interacts with her own magic. The give and take--she is a necromancer but gives parts of her soul with each incarnation--is very well-done.
-I like all of the POV characters and I think they are characterized well and distinct enough that I know who we're following (though it is nice that the chapter names tell us)
-Medina's writing style is lovely and fluid
-Azul and her LI Virel Enjul/The Emissary of death are fantastic together, and I love that ending! I like that their banter feels fresh and their philosophical discussions are delightful; I love that it's not like "oh he's so hot," but like "I'm growing to reluctantly respect this man that I'm kinda stuck...and also, he's kinda hot." This is enemies to lovers done right.

Then the things I don't love:
-I spent longer than I should have trying to figure out who side characters were, because we sometimes switch between first name, last name, and title. Tbh, I personally should be used to this (I read a lot of Russian lit, which does this), but if even I'm confused, I can see someone who's never read a book in this style being very, very hopelessly lost
-The twist at the end was not hitting (for me) due to said confusion
-There were notable pacing problems

While I agree with reviewers that some parts were a little messy or undercooked, I applaud Medina for taking risks, because I am so sick of all these cookie-cutter romantasies that play it safe. Mistress of Bones is meaty, dark, and intriguing, with politics and characters that are mature enough for older YA readers to enjoy while also being one of those books that make younger YA readers feel crazy smart if they can guess all the twists and non-linear narratives.

Honestly, I'd low-key call this high fantasy rather than "romantic" fantasy, and I think that's why we're seeing a lot of these low reviews. Calling something "romantic" in this market regrettably comes with certain expectations--spice! tropes! equal parts fantasy and romance!--and Mistress of Bones subverts pretty much all of those. So you've got disappointed romantasy readers unlikely to recommend it and likely to DNF, high fantasy readers who will likely shy away, and adult readers who may avoid it due to the YA classification, though all the characters here are fully fledged adults (the youngest being Azul at nineteen). So yeah. I continue to beef with marketing re: genre classifications.

But you know what I DON'T beef with? This book. Y'all should give it a try.

Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books, and Maria Z. Medina for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review! I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the duology's conclusion!

DNF at 26%. I loved the concept of this story and the first few chapters were interesting but the pacing was off and it was difficult to connect to the plot. Ultimately, this book was not for me.

[NOTE: I do not post reviews for books I DNF.]