um. i mean my standards weren’t exactly high. i mean the premise was fine… and the execution was also fine! 

honestly most of the characters lack depth minus blue. she felt quite fleshed out and i really liked her, but she felt like she was missing something. maybe motivations? she kinda just felt like she was doing things because the plot required her too in regards to the boys. ronan kind of suffers from the same issue, except at least blue has a personality. ronan has nothing going for him other than being a cliched bad boy and chainsaw. shout out chainsaw. adam is a cutie but yet again lacks any real personality. gansey is quite pathetic and at least has a motivation but he’s quite insufferable. half of the time i was wishing he would die in this book. but i mean out of all the boys he did have the most personality, but yet again idk he felt like he was missing something. 

the plot was certainly a choice! the beginning was quite intriguing as well as the ending, but for like 60% of the book i was bored. it kind of just felt like most of the book was set up which is always boring as hell.

i really liked the whelk subplot. once all surrounding that was revealed i literally was texting han like “OH MY GOD 😱😱😱”. probably the best part of the book. i really liked the resolution of this plot in terms of noah, but in terms of what happened to whelk idk it felt anticlimatic. at times he did feel a bit of a

cartoon supervillain but i mean it’s also YA i wasn’t expecting a morally grey villain or sm.

 

there were a lot of subplots that were lightly touched on which annoyed me so much. i hate when you can tell a book is just laying the foundations for its sequel. like yes ok some open ended plots can exist but when literally Every Single Subplot is still open minus the one with adam’s family….. stinker. like seriously we got barely any answers about blue’s dad, glendower, ronan, etc. idk it’s a pet peeve of mine.

the biggest issue with this book is the fact it’s probably the most blatant sequel bait i’ve ever experienced. holy shit there was no subtlety in this. there was so much filler at times that only existed to build up relationships more, which honestly didn’t need over 300 pages to do so!!! oh my god stievfater girl go give me nothing!!! i still had a decent time and defo will finish the series but ugh i fucking hate when media is so clearly set up for the next spinoff or sequel or prequel or whatever. personally i think the first book of a series should be able to semi-stand on its own and this does not do that even in the slightest.