Objectively speaking, this book has a lot of problems. Like, it’s very decidedly not perfect. But it also has so much mindless fun interspersed with poignant, relatable moments of the “how to say ‘no’ to the bad things your parents made you believe about yourself and the world” variety, that I found the problems perfectly forgivable. It made for a fantastic bedtime story that made me smile a lot.

Coal really charmed me as protagonist. I mean, sometimes his puns got as cringy as his waxing poetics about Hex’s perfection, but it felt like a feature, not a bug, given his arc. It was abundantly clear how his “perpetual class clown” behavior came from a mix of wanting to lighten other people’s loads and not trusting himself to do it via means other than cracking jokes. He was so kind and so lost, but then he found himself and opened up, and it was just so good to see that played out. I admit I cared about his coming into his own + his and his brother’s relationship with their father far more than I cared about the way too insta-lovey for my tastes romance, but the romance played nicely into Coal’s personal arc and had so many cute and sometimes poignant moments.

I also really liked the dynamics between Coal, Kris, and Iris as a friend group, as well as Coal and Kris’s relationship as brothers. They’re all so there for each other, but also have certain persistent misconceptions about each other that very much make sense in context. I do wish there was a bit more focus on Iris’s family situation and on Iris in general—I feel like there was a way to give her more space without taking away from Coal and Kris and their journeys dealing with what their parents  had made of them. As it was, it sometimes felt like she was a pawn for the narrative, not just for the antagonists governing the characters’ lives. When she did get moments to shine and open up, I consistently loved her.

My big problem with the book was the flimsy, inconsistent worldbuilding that in turn made the external plot feel flimsy and contrived. The scenes where things just boiled down to relationships—”two sons dealing with their father trying to mold them into figures on the board and focusing more on the public image while they’re all falling apart when the cameras aren’t running,” this kind of thing—really hit home. But whenever I thought too hard about the exact circumstances, my brain threatened to combust. The way all this holiday realms worked made so little sense. Like, on one hand, they have their own ecosystems with their citizens and companies and paparazzi, and magic is very important to all this, but on the other hand, they all secretly go to human universities like Yale to get degrees in human business and international relations and whatnot? That alone made me want to poke at stuff. And then the joy economy and the relationships between holidays, and “keeping other holidays from whole different seasons in check”—all of that is so crucial to the plot, but so riddled with holes and non-explanations. Also, the whole vision of all the holidays is incredibly Western-centric, or perhaps even US-centric at times. And don’t get me started at those “we don’t care about the religious aspect of the holidays we govern because human religions change over time etc,” because nope, that’s not quite what happens.

But yeah, despite all those problems the things that worked, worked, and I’m glad I stumbled upon this book. It turned out to be a great distraction right when I needed it!