I moved from wanting to give this book 4 stars or 3 stars a couple of times. I finally decided on 3 and a half stars. It’s not to say that I didn’t like this, I really did! It just also confused me a lot.

What I mean when I say ‘it confused me’ I meant that the comps are The Sun is Also a Star meets Jumanji. Now I’ve never read The Sun is Also a Star, and neither have I watched it (it’s been adapted into a movie this year? Last year?). But I love Jumanji. I’ve watched the original multiple times and the new sequels a couple of times. I love all of them. But I think I focused too much on the Jumanji side of the comp when I should’ve focused on the other side – even if I’ve never read the other comp.

Yes, this does have the fantasy element in it but also I wanted more? I did really enjoy the utter absurdity of snow falling in the airport and plants growing everywhere. Their phones being permanently on 100% and anytime they tried to post about what was happening – they just couldn’t. Like was it the airport somehow stopping them? Who knows and I quite liked that! I like the writing and that the author wrote an omniscient third person point of view. That was definitely different than other books I’ve read (I don’t even know of any other). There was often a feeling of show, don’t tell (meaning it felt like the author just described everything rather than letting the reader read about it), and I’m not a big fan of that.

The plot was interesting (even though I wanted more 😄). I did however become annoyed a lot of times as I’m like “do they not… think it’s super weird to have snow falling IN the airport? Why are they just walking around and holding hands?

I liked the characters enough, even though James and Michelle were instalove – not a favourite of mine, unfortunately. I like to build up to the relationship most of the time. It’s rare that I’ll enjoy an instalove and that’s usually due to the writing style or the plot/characters.

I also didn’t like their voices or personality as much as I had hoped to. Michelle felt like she was written as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Or like she only watches foreign art films and her favourite thing is to go to old bookstores – that type of quirky, I’m not like other girls vibe. She also kept giving all of these big speeches to James even though she’s just 2 years older than him. But other than that I liked her fierceness. She had plans and she wanted to fulfil them. I could get behind that!

I liked James a lot. He was funny and I liked that he just didn’t really know what he wanted to do a lot of times. Which, I know, is probably a weird thing to say, but I liked that. I would actually want to see more characters not knowing what their next step is – in any genre.

Unfortunately in this instance I would not be walking around with a stranger 😆. No matter how hot they are! I’ll be trying to get back to my parents. Like there has to be service stairs or normal stairs? Something the staff uses or a back entrance? I’d make a huge fuss over it so I think I would’ve liked to have seen that in the book.

There was a Harry Potter reference (referring to a Boggart) and you could’ve literally just replaced it with a normal shapeshifter and the reader would’ve understood?