I really wanted to like this book but, some personal enjoyment aside, this was just...not the one for me.

First of, I want to use a disclaimer: I have nothing PERSONALLY against this book. In fact, as I stated above, I did enjoy it quite a bit! Just going from personal investment/enjoyment and the number of times I had to laugh I should be giving this about 3.5 stars - but I just can't lol

My biggest complaint is that the entire book feels like a Drarry fanfic.
And I don't mean this in a "fanfic is automatically not as good as published books" kind of way. I adore fanfic. It's whack, it's over the top, it's everything a lot of published books DON'T give us because publishing doesn't understand that the appeal of fanfiction is that authors literally just pour their obsessions and love onto an electronic page.
But: "Carry on" is a fanfic in the sense that it feels like I should know these characters, and I don't.
Let me explain.

The book starts out with Simon being in his eighth year at his magical school and basically his eighth year of being threatened by a being they all just call "The Shadow". How do I know that? Because Simon tells me. Himself. In excruciating details I'd rather have read about than hear him tell me.
The book relies so heavily on you knowing what happened in the past (to get the characters' motivations, their backstory, everything they've been up to in their entire school career...the list goes on tbh) that it feels exactly like fanfiction in the sense that it feels like the author expects me to know this universe and these characters and their shenanigans and just doesn't really bother with worldbuilding anymore. Instead, I get small nudges and hints á là "hey, remember when this happened in canon???? and how much we loved it??? yea ME TOO"
Hence: the fanfic comparison.

Now going into why it specifically feels like Drarry fanfic: the entire book reads like poorly disguised Harry Potter fanfic with Draco (as Baz, vampire) and Harry (as Simon, the Chosen One) as our main couple. I swear I've read eighth Hogwarts year fanfic that had a very similar plotline if not exactly THIS plotline lmao
As the author, I'd have been TERRIFIED of a lawsuit while publishing this ngl

The actual plot (instead of the reminiscing we do the entire time about what happened early, aka anything from 7 to 1 year in the past) only picks up at about halfway through the book and at that point I was too annoyed to care. Some moments were decently funny or at least trying to be emotional and that was pretty much it.

Do I recommend this book? No but if you DO want something similar I can probably find about 30 fanfics that did it better :)