Ruinsong Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A dark YA fantasy with a genuinely original magic system — song as a weapon — and a slow-burn romance between two young women on opposite sides of a tyranny, let down by a sluggish middle, passive leads and an ending that arrives all at once.

Best for: Readers who want a standalone sapphic fantasy built around music magic and complicity, and who can tolerate a slow first two-thirds and a thin villain in exchange for a dark, idea-led book.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — young adult; no romance.io listing, and no reviewer flags on-page sex)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.2/5 — a 3.46 Goodreads average across 3,161 ratings, with “boring” the single loudest complaint)

Tropes: Childhood friends to lovers, political opposites, magic through music, tyrant queen, rebellion, slow burn, dual POV, forced complicity, Phantom of the Opera inspiration, standalone.

Ruinsong by Julia Ember is a standalone young adult sapphic fantasy from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, loosely inspired by The Phantom of the Opera and set in a kingdom where magic is sung — and where Cadence, the queen’s captive prodigy, is reunited with Remi, the noble girl she loved as a child, at the exact moment Remi’s class has become the queen’s chosen target.

It carries a 3.46 average across 3,161 Goodreads ratings, recommended reviews from School Library Journal and Kirkus, and a reader response split almost exactly down the middle: 48% of ratings are four or five stars, 49% are three or fewer. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Ruinsong About?

Ruinsong is YA dark fantasy first and romance second — the publisher lists it for ages 14 to 18, and Amazon files it under teen dark fantasy as well as teen LGBTQ+ romance. Dark here means state violence rather than horror atmosphere: the book is about a regime that keeps power by torturing its enemies in public, and about the girl it uses to do it. The opera-house setting and the masks are where the Phantom borrowing lives; the rest is its own invention.

Cadence lacks the one thing a protagonist usually starts with — the freedom to refuse. Taken from her family as a small child, she has spent her life as the queen’s instrument, and she has made the kind of peace with that which survival requires. Remi lacks the opposite: she has privilege and conviction, and she assumes that being right should be enough. The book alternates first-person chapters between them, which lets you see the same regime from inside the palace and from the class it is grinding down.

What Makes This Sapphic YA Dark Fantasy Work

Magic through song: The most praised element by a distance — and praised even inside the one- and two-star reviews, where readers who did not finish still call the concept cool.
A heroine defined by complicity: School Library Journal singles out Cadence’s struggle with her conscience as relatable, and the book is most interesting when it refuses to make her innocent.
Genuinely dark stakes: “Dark” is StoryGraph readers’ top mood tag at 67%. Torture is on the page, and it is not softened for the age range.
A queer-normal world: Among the common people, same-sex relationships are simply accepted — a detail both a trade reviewer and several readers note with relief.
A real standalone: One book, one arc, no trilogy commitment — which at least one two-star reviewer counted as a point in its favour.

Book Synopsis

In Cadence’s kingdom, a trained voice is power. Magic is something you sing, and the queen who rules has learned exactly how much harm a single gifted voice can do. Cadence has been her weapon since she was six years old, kept close and kept useful, and when the queen calls on her to perform at the opera house, she sings the disgraced nobility into agony.

She has told herself for years that she has no choice, and she is mostly right. Then Remi walks back into her life. They were inseparable as children, before the queen took Cadence away; now Remi is a young noblewoman whose family sits squarely in the queen’s sights, and she has begun to wonder whether her class’s comfortable silence is its own kind of complicity. She sees in Cadence both the person she remembers and the thing the regime has made of her.

Remi has found her way to people who want the queen gone, and they think Cadence’s voice could end the regime as easily as it sustains it. Cadence has every reason to keep her head down — in a world built on song, the regime’s enemies risk losing their voices for good. But the girl she never stopped thinking about is asking her to choose, and the queen is asking her to sing again. The question that drives the rest of the book is whether Cadence can turn the voice the queen built into something that belongs to her.

My Review

The idea at the centre of Ruinsong is excellent, and it deserves to be said first. A magic system built on song, and a heroine whose gift has been turned into an instrument of state torture, is a premise with real moral weight — and Ember commits to it. The performance scenes are genuinely disturbing, and the book never lets Cadence off the hook for what she has done, even when she had no way out. That is braver than most YA fantasy manages.

The second real strength is the political frame. The book is about voice in both senses — whose is heard, whose is silenced, what it costs to use yours — and School Library Journal is right that the politics read as pointedly topical. The queer-normal world helps, too: Cadence and Remi’s obstacles are the regime and their own choices, not homophobia, and for a 2020 YA fantasy that was a deliberate, welcome decision.

Where it struggles is pace, and this is not a personal gripe — it is the single most repeated complaint in the low-star reviews. Of the sixty one- and two-star reviews I read, roughly fifteen independently use some version of “boring,” and about seven are did-not-finish reports. The shape of the problem is consistent: a long, static first two-thirds, then most of the plot arrives in the final chapters, which a separate group of readers calls rushed. Around that sit the secondary complaints: leads described as passive and naive (Remi in particular), a villain whose motive several readers found thin, worldbuilding that does not quite hold together, and a romance some call slow burn and others call instalove. Kirkus and SLJ both flag uneven pacing too, so this is one of those cases where the trade and the readers agree.

One expectation to reset: the cover copy leans on The Phantom of the Opera, and readers repeatedly report that the connection is limited to masks, singing and an opera house. If you want a retelling, calibrate. If the Phantom framing put you off because you dislike the original’s obsession plot, relax — this is a rebellion story with a romance in it, not a stalker story.

My honest note: A four-star premise delivered at three-star pace, held together by its magic and its moral nerve. If a slow middle reliably loses you, this will lose you. If you can wait it out, the song magic and the ending are worth the patience.

Element	In Ruinsong
Central relationship	Cadence & Remi — the queen’s captive singer and a young noblewoman, childhood friends on opposite sides of a tyranny
Core tropes	Childhood friends to lovers, political opposites, magic through music, tyrant queen, rebellion, slow burn
Setting	A secondary-world kingdom where magic is sung, centred on its opera house
Heat level	1/5 — young adult; no romance.io listing
Series	Standalone — no sequel published or announced
Content notes	Graphic torture and violence, animal death, gore, homophobia, death of a parent, vomiting, a brief abortion reference

How Dark and Spicy Is Ruinsong?

Spice first: a 1/5. romance.io has no entry for Ruinsong, which is normal for a young adult title and tells you the book is not being catalogued as adult romance at all. The publisher’s age range is 14 to 18, and no reviewer I found flags on-page sex; at most, one reader notes Cadence’s attraction on seeing Remi again. The romance is a slow-moving thread inside a political plot, not the engine.

Darkness is the real question, and the answer is: genuinely dark for YA. StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings put torture, violence and animal death in the graphic tier, and the death of a dog is a did-not-finish point for at least one reader and a warning in several more. Kirkus calls the violence graphic but not excessive. If you want this kind of YA register elsewhere, Girls of Paper and Fire handles abuse of royal power with similar restraint on the romance, and Cinderella Is Dead sits at the same 1/5 heat.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: a magic system built on music sounds like the whole point, you like heroines who are compromised rather than chosen, you want a standalone sapphic fantasy with real political stakes, and you are happy with a slow burn that stays mostly on the page’s margins.

You may want to skip it if: a static middle reliably makes you put books down, you need active protagonists who drive the plot, you want a full Phantom retelling, or animal death and on-page torture are hard limits.

In short: a brave idea and a dark heart, delivered at a pace that tests a lot of readers’ patience.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

Nothing is driving readers to Ruinsong right now — it is a 2020 backlist title, and its Kindle sales rank sits around two million. Its discovery story belongs to its launch: Goodreads’ most-anticipated YA list for fall 2020, a Publishers Weekly noteworthy-releases mention, and a long run of listicles. I found no BookTok footprint and no current trade coverage, and Reddit was unreachable on this pass [Reddit could not be checked — the browser session failed]. What it has instead is steady library and list presence, which is how most readers meet it today, and an audiobook that has been available since publication day: narrated by Lauren Ezzo, unabridged, running 8 hours 31 minutes. I found no listener reaction to the narration either way.

Prefer audio? Listen to Ruinsong on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The song magic, first and almost unanimously — it is praised in four- and five-star reviews and, notably, in most of the negative ones too. Then the darkness, which readers who loved the book name as the draw rather than the cost. The romance has a real following: several readers praise a slow burn that stands out from YA instalove, and one reviewer singles out the fat representation. The cover gets named again and again. Kirkus says “readers looking for inclusive Sapphic fantasy will be pleased,” and the queer-normal society is a recurring point of relief.

What readers argue about and complain about: Boredom, above everything — roughly fifteen of the sixty low-star reviews I read say it in some form, and the mechanism is consistent: very little happens for the first 200-odd pages, and then the action lands in a handful of chapters. The second theme is the leads — Cadence read as passive and Remi as naive, with at least three reviewers singling Remi out as the reason they disengaged. Third: the Phantom comparison, which about seven readers call a stretch. Then a cluster of roughly six reviewers each on a villain whose motive reads as cliché, worldbuilding that does not hold (the persecuted nobles somehow keep their wealth), and the romance feeling rushed. The most interesting divergence is about race: Kirkus and SLJ both describe the cast’s diversity positively, while around six readers find the repeated labelling of characters as white jarring — the same detail, read in opposite directions. Two one-star reviewers also raise a discomfort about the leads’ ages in their shared backstory; it is a minority note, and I could not confirm the detail. Opinions genuinely divide on the slow burn — some call it the book’s best romantic decision, others call it instalove.

The standalone question worth asking first: Ruinsong resolves on its own and needs nothing further; a couple of readers read a sequel hint into the closing pages, but no sequel exists or has been announced. Readers do call the resolution abrupt, so expect a hopeful close rather than a long epilogue. If you want more Ember, note that her earlier, smaller backlist actually rates higher: The Navigator’s Touch sits at 3.86 and The Seafarer’s Kiss at 3.62, though on far fewer ratings than Ruinsong‘s 3,161. Her only new title listed is a co-written book expected in 2027.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Ruinsong a standalone?

Yes. Ruinsong is a single-volume story with no sequel published or announced. A few readers sense a sequel hook in the final pages, but the main plot resolves.

How spicy is Ruinsong?

A 1/5. It is a young adult novel for ages 14 to 18 with no romance.io listing, and no reviewer flags on-page sex. The romance is a slow-burn thread inside a political plot.

Is Ruinsong a Phantom of the Opera retelling?

Loosely. The opera house, the masks and the singing come from Phantom, but readers repeatedly say that is where the resemblance ends. Read it as an original dark fantasy with a Phantom flavour.

How dark is Ruinsong?

Dark for YA. StoryGraph readers list torture, violence and animal death as graphic content warnings, and the torture scenes are on the page. Kirkus calls the violence graphic but not excessive.

Is there a Ruinsong audiobook?

Yes. Lauren Ezzo narrates the unabridged audiobook, which runs 8 hours 31 minutes and was released alongside the print edition in November 2020.

If You Loved Ruinsong, Read These Next

Readers who want two young women on opposite sides of a power structure should go straight to Crier’s War, which runs the same political-opposites engine with stronger momentum and a bigger fan base. If the tyrant ruler and the cost of resisting are what held you, Girls of Paper and Fire goes darker and more personal. And for another YA sapphic rebellion against a cruel regime, Cinderella Is Dead trades song for fairy-tale revisionism at the same heat level.

For more in this register, browse our full list of YA sapphic fantasy books, the friends-to-lovers archive, or the complete Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Ruinsong is a book whose idea outruns its momentum. The song magic is genuinely original, the moral weight of Cadence’s complicity is handled with nerve, and the queer-normal world gives the romance room to be about choice rather than shame. It is also slow for most of its length, built around leads many readers found passive, and resolved in a rush. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how much patience you bring — but the reader who wants a dark, self-contained sapphic fantasy with a premise nobody else has done gets one, with no sequel attached. Check Ruinsong on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Ruinsong ranks as a high-concept YA sapphic dark fantasy — original and morally serious, held back by pace and passive leads, and best approached for the song magic and the complicity theme rather than the romance or the Phantom retelling.