Thank you to DAW for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. 

Well that was one hell of an opening. Strange and ethereal fae and supernatural humans, hunting and the hunted, and a doorway through worlds set into a tree. Alright, you got me. Let’s go!

Aaaaand that’s unfortunately about as far as it goes. By a quarter of the way through I’m waiting for something, anything to happen. It’s not extensive in world building because it’s mostly dystopian modern day. We don’t get any idea of the fae or what’s driving them at this point. I’m desperately trying to connect with any of the characters and… I just can’t. I am afraid it’s a DNF for me. I need more. I need to feel like I’m there. It’s all so passive that I can’t get into the story. I love the premise. I just with the execution was an inventive as the concept. 

I… did not like it. I wanted to, I really did. Maybe because I play RPGs, but I was bored. The technical rundowns were fine but they were endless. I stopped playing games because the builds needed to advance were nigh impossible and that’s what this started to feel like. The talking cat helped but not enough to keep me interested. It’s a DNF for me at 25%. 

I wanted to like this. I was even excited for this to come out. 100 pages in and I hate it. It’s slow, it reads like a history textbook narrative and there’s no character building. And why was he so focused on their meals. Every. Single. Meal. I can’t do it. It’s a DNF for me. 

I think I’d like to revisit this one but right before a current change of power in the US was the wrong time and mindset. 

I loved the first book so much, I was disappointed this one didn’t snag my interest in the same way. I may try to come back and try again later. I hate to write it off completely. 

This just did not grab me. I was struggling to get through to 18 pages and I could not find myself caring what happened next. 

I was hoping for a funny, quirky office comedy. That is not this book. I am the poster child for office anxiety, so I’d like to say I feel well-versed on how it feels and looks from the outside. The MC was just deeply depressed, awkward, and self-destructive. This is a big old did not finish for me.

I was going to leave this alone, but I looked at the publish date. Oh hell no. The main mechanic for the MC to get access to everyone’s emails is that she would write petty notes at the end of emails, change the font color to white and go undetected until the day she forgot to change the text color. No. Just no. The publish date is 2024. Far past the era of dark mode and inline replies in text. You can’t hide anything in white text anymore and haven’t for damn near 10 years. Starting off on that premise alone is where to book goes sideways. Then add the deeply depressive actions of the MC that the author calls anxiety. No ma’am. Anyone that lives with the anxiety that is described so deeply as this MC would EVER hit send after adding those postscripts in white text because of the change of maybe, kinda, sorta, possibly being discovered. And that right there is when I stopped caring enough to continue reading. (I’m not even touching what the dynamic was between her and the 12 year old neighbor.) Highly depressing that this was my first flop for 2025 when it had been so highly recommended on BookTok. Y’all need to get your head checked. 

I picked this up not realizing it was a cozy mystery. This is my second in that category, and they are just not for me. Moved too slow, main characters were kind of hard to relate to, and the mystery itself wasn’t engaging enough to keep me reading. 

The main character is awful and not in an appealing way. I couldn’t get past it enough to want to read the rest of the story.