Kind of a disappointing book ngl. The description made it sound much more interesting and fun but this was a pain to finish.
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It starts off taking place in New York City of all places, which is the most boring setting for a fantasy I’ve read and I really wish people would stop going “oh modern fantasy - NYC it is!” It isn’t until the literal halfway point that we even GET to the Hazel Wood.

The main character is the worst person - she’s rude, she’s violent, and she’s just plain mean to the ONE SINGLE PERSON who is going out of his way to help her. She has it in her head that she’s the one person in the world who has ever suffered, even ignoring her mixed friend saying that hey, racism isn’t solved by money. AND HER RESPONSE IS TO BE UPSET TO THE POINT THAT SHE INTENTIONALLY TRIES TO CRASH THE CAR INTO THE TREES??? I wish I was joking. He tells her hey, don’t argue with cops while I’m there because it’s dangerous to me, and her response is to try to kill them both. Great.

She also treats him like him GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO HELP HER is like, an imposition on her or something because she’s so dead set on being “independent” that it circles right around back to her ignoring legitimate offers for help.

Finch is the best character in the book, hands down. And he’s treated extremely poorly - which is concerning considering he’s practically the only person of color in the book. Every other second the main character gets she calls him ugly and insulting him - DESPITE THE FACT THAT AT NO POINT IS HE EVER DESCRIBED UGLY and it REALLY feels like the author wanted a mixed kid in her book (for “points” maybe) but ALSO wanted to be sure that he would NEVER get with the white main lead. The only reason I’d ever be glad that there isn’t a romance between the two is because Finch deserves better. I finished the book for him and for him only. He practically dies and I had to finish to make sure he lived because if he didn’t I was going to throw this book at the wall.

It’s honestly kind of insulting how often the main character insults Finch for being a “fan” of her grandmother’s work, despite him never treating her poorly AND THE FACT that him being a fan is the entire reason she even has an INKLING of what is going on, OR the fact that he is literally the only one helping her. Going out of his way to do so, and putting himself in danger for her. And the entire time she’s either insulting him to his face, in her head, or “upset that she needs to rely on him” or whatever.

Despite also growing up poor, she has very cruel observations and thoughts on a woman who went into the woods and came out mentally unstable - about how messy and disgusting and dirty her place is, when I’m fairly certain she just had a slightly messy apartment. Seems like even though she hates her rich stepfather she still adopted some of his classist views.

Listen, I finished the book. I get “why” she’s so angry and everything, but that doesn’t excuse her being a terrible person and it being annoying to have to live in her head the entire book.
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I don’t think there was a single time I liked the main character, hands down. Finch deserves better than her and honestly, he should have stopped helping her when her stepfather pulled a gun on them both. (ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING SHE ALMOST GETS HIM KILLED)
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“And who uses a car game as an excuse to brag about having sex with some bitch in a park?”
“Some bitch? She was my girlfriend for eight months. It’s so ugly when girls call each other that.”
“Oh, my god, Finch, go get a liberal arts degree.”
In a perfect world I would’ve had headphones I could put on right then, and a cigarette I could smoke in his airspace, but this was not a perfect world.

I legitimately reconsidered my life choices that brought me to reading this book at this point.
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“...but you’d have to be dumber than Persephone to drink anything in fairyland.”
Rude, Alice.