While it started off slowly, it quickly picked up the pace and kept at it for the duration of the novel. I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the week timer that the Mila and the other girls had before they returned to the grave but I will admit at first I thought that waiting for the time that the spell could take place would take up a good chunk of the first part of the book.

I think it did a good job of capturing all aspects of teenager-dom. The feeling of being somewhat of an outcast no matter which clique you're in. Not knowing exactly how your actions affect someone else until it is right up in your face. Not being sure how to process grief at such a young age because, in my opinion, losing your best friend at roughly 16-17 is still considered a tragedy even in this day and age. I also like the somewhat off the cuff commentary on the performative aspect of grief. Because I think that is something our society expects a lot of and when people don't react the way you think they should when someone close to them dies, there is either judgement r concern. I also like the revelation that Mila had that not everyone was out to get her and people outside of Riley did care about her and want to get to know her.

I wish there had been more of a developed sense of Riley and Mila's friendship from when Riley was alive because, to be honest, undead Riley was not a favorite of mine. I felt she was too belittling of Mila for the majority of the book and while the reasons for that do come to light a bit at the end, it was still annoying. June was the typical mean girl exterior nice-ish girl interior for most of the book. Dayton was actually my favorite undead girl out of all three since she reminded me somewhat of a friend I had in high school; flighty but still intelligent. Kind of naïve in how her actions had affected others when she was alive and genuinely sorry to realize the hurt that she had caused. And she was the first one to show genuine concern for Mila whenever they were in danger constantly reminding her that out of the four of them, only Mila could really die.

This also had the thread of bittersweet in it since honestly none of these girls deserved to die. They weren't perfect people, not even Riley, but they all had their lives ahead of them and they all got cheated out of it. They never got the opportunity to be better people so all anyone apart from Mila would remember them as were the mean girls and the outcast. Dayton was the one who had the most visible reaction about this when she realized that she would never swim or sing or see her brothers and sisters again. Everyone made peace with the fact that this was how it was, but they also grieved for it while they were back on earth.

This is really more of a 4.5 stars but since we don't do half stars here, and it wasn't quite up to what a five stars would be for me. And a few of the reasons for that involve the ending including the big revelation and how that resolved itself. However I still enjoyed how other aspects of the story were resolved and the realizations that Mila had. I could definitely pick this one up again and re-read it in the future.