When I started this, I honestly wasn't sure why it had such a low rating. I knew there was some controversy, but the book seemed generally fine, not necessarily bad enough to warrant the low rating. Unfortunately, the closer I got to the end of the book, the mediocrity got to me and I started becoming more and more frustrating with how predictable the book was, while also starting to dislike Kat more and more.

I picked up this book for one main reason: sapphic vampires. I've been less into the high school setting recently, though I do still love many books in this setting, and I was hoping this book would be one of those. In the end, I didn't even end up minding the high school setting, because my true letdown was romance/relationship. There was just way too much muddling it, on top of a strong air of insta-love. By the end, my indifference towards the romance turned into just straight dislike, and I don't even think I wanted Kat and Taylor to be end-game by the time I finished. I think this is largely due to the book just not spending anywhere near enough time building up this part of the book.

There was just too much fit into this book. The closer I got to the end, the more like it felt like this book needed a sequel to wrap everything properly up. Instead, all the reveals are rapid-fired at the end (though I mean, it was pretty easy to predict what these reveals would be), meaning there wasn't actually any space left in the book to fully digest and process these reveals, and what it meant for the characters and their vampire society overall. While I was actually surprised that the ending didn't feel too incredibly rushed, I feel like we lost a lot of the space to discuss the reveals and their impact, which could've made the book as a whole hit a lot harder. This book tried to tackle a lot of societal issues (both vampire-themed and things like diversity and racism), but the ending made a lot of these potential discussions disappear. I don't necessarily think this book would've been the place for most of those discussions to flourish anyway, but I would've liked a deeper look into the vampire society and the ramifications of these reveals, as well as a bit more surrounding the queer issues that this book starts to bring up.

Overall, while this book wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting from some of the bad reviews I've seen and the goodreads rating, it just wasn't all that good either unfortunately.