I'm glad to say I was delighted by this book. One of my favorite authors has posted many times about how much she loves this series, and after just reading the first one I can see why. The way that Marchetta writes about grief and the isolation of these characters is incredible. I love how she told this story and the characters she developed. It makes me want to read it again, knowing what I know, to get a deeper experience out of it. Sure, not everything was perfect (I wanted to feel more about the development of the romance, not just be told it happened, etc), but I still loved it so so much. 

[Edit: it’s been a few days since I finished this book and I just cannot stop thinking about it, so I’m changing my rating to 5 stars!]