This beautiful, fantastical, magical love letter to books and stories completely blew me away. I’m not going to try and recount the synopsis, I just want to gush about how The Starless Sea made me feel.

It gave me that yearning, that deep ache in your chest you used to feel when you were younger, exposed to magical worlds for the first time and wishing so deeply that you could be a part of it, that you could step through the pages and experience the magic for yourself. I fell in love with every single character, they all felt so real to me and I know that they’ll live on for a long time.

I loved how Morgenstern diverged from the main storyline often with the fairytales and then with Kat’s diary entries near the end, because as much as I loved Zachary’s story, it could get a little overwhelming at times. Much of my gaming experience comes in the form of Animal Crossing for DS, but it reminded me of a side quest, so like when you got a bit sick of trying to renovate your cottage into a mansion so you went off and caught some butterflies for a while, but then you’d come back refreshed and ready to make Tom Nook refurb your house. Wait, where was I?

And you know what, it is a bit over the top. She does love flowery language and she’s not afraid to use it, she doesn’t give a fuck if it sounds pretentious or too purple. She writes how she wants and you can sense her passion for words and language through the page, so just let yourself be swept up in the prose and float away on the starless sea.

I think when you read the last sentence of a book and it makes you smile like an idiot and then proceed to hug it to your chest for five minutes, it’s done its job. Well done, Erin Morgenstern.