The premise of this story was unique and interesting. I liked the general idea, with the children trying to get back to their weird other worlds, but the rest of it really fell flat for me. The characters all felt two dimensional and unrealistic, especially in the way they all reacted to the murders.

I've seen a lot of praise for this book for its diversity, but these aspects of the book seemed completely contrived. It read like the author thought it might be a good idea to put some "diversity" into the book so just stuck some buzzwords in irrespective of how well it worked with the story. The girl insulting the trans character towards the end just seemed ridiculous. These kids walk on rainbows and make skeletons dance with noiseless flutes, yet a trans kid might not be "normal"? And main character's asexuality was, in my opinion, really poorly done. Why on earth would a girl who has been a human statue in a world of the dead for the past year or two years or whatever it was be fussing so much about her sexuality in the first five minutes of meeting people? While I think it's great that diversity is becoming such a big thing in literature, every book I read seems to just have these elements just for the sake of having them (or maybe I'm just cynical).