I don't want to be mean, but I tried to like this book and I just couldn't do it. The writing is unbearably bland and fails to deliver on both narrative and action. The characters are flat and the plot is muddled and contrived. The dialogue is awkward at the best of times and laughably bad (particularly in the exchanges between the three sleazy adult men, which appear to have been drafted by a nine-year-old) at the worst. The book never surprised me and failed to lean into its setting in any meaningful way. For a book that intentionally name-drops The Night Circus and Alice in Wonderland, this book has little regard for magic and doesn't seem to care for whimsy.