This book, to me, is like the starjar it introduces on its first page - filled with chemicals and shaken up, it bursts into wondrous light. 

That is to say, this book is really incredible. Achingly sad and brutal and filled with an endless and complicated variety of love. The characters are so human, so complex and shattered and holding each other up rather than together.

I can't find the right words to sum up how I feel about the book. It all works so well together that I tried to find a way to call it 'effortless', but it's not that. Maybe 'affecting' is right - something tied together so carefully that it can't help but cause a hundred feelings.

There's a lot of brutality and a lot of pain here. An Unkindness of Ghosts is saying so, so many things. It tells them through Aster, possibly one of my favourite characters I've ever been in the head of, but also through so many people who love her so deeply. Every chapter exceeded what came prior in illuminating the world and the people who mattered to the book, and nothing felt overexplained or contrived.

I've heard so much good about this book, but by the time I was done I knew just how little I'd known about it before going in. I'm going to be thinking about Aster and Theo especially for a long time. I'm going to be thinking about this book for a LONG time.