I think Sara Novic has become a favorite author for me. I read Girl at War earlier this year, which was fantastic, and now this book was even better. It feels like she's just become a stronger writer, and she was already great.

This follows three people at a school for the deaf, two students and a headmistress, leading up to several students going missing one night. It's so well done in basically every capacity.

All three characters were so distinct with their struggles and perspectives. They never sounded alike, which is something I sometimes struggle with in multiple POV books. They each felt so necessary. Like take away any of them and the whole book would fall apart. I especially loved Charlie, the teenage girl with hearing parents who grew up almost without language because they refused to have her learn sign language. She was such a well crafted character and she really tugged on my heartstrings.

One thing that was kind of jarring for me was when it switched POV to someone outside the main cast. It happened a few times and while it made sense for the information that was shared, in the context of the storytelling it didn't work well for me. It always felt out of place and like I needed to readjust my mindset, and I kind of just wished we'd stuck to the main characters.

My only other critique is that I wish it'd been longer lol. It was just so good and I feel like it would have been even better if it'd been slower and more detailed, but that's probably just my preference for painfully slow books showing. Just some more time and development I think would have been amazing. The ending especially felt a bit abrupt.

It's also own voices and you can tell in the amount of cultural knowledge Novic shares. There's a lot of history of deaf culture and instruction on ASL weaved into the story.

I can't recommend this enough. Novic is a fantastic writer and I'm already excited for whatever she writes next. Definitely think you should give this book a go if it sounds even remotely interesting to you.