Before I get into the negatives I want to mention how much I love the representation in this book. POC and LGBTQ abound in this book and I was so happy to see fantasy being de-whitified. However, this book was long. Probably longer than it needed to be with a rather abrupt ending. Many if not all of the questions I had about loose ends were answered and I generally enjoyed the ride through this book but still feel it could have been 50-100 pages (at least) shorter.

In general, I liked the book. However, some of the side stories on Beauvoir or the Surrealists don't seem to add much to the narrative, yet take up much space in the argument. Could have used with some tighter editing in my opinion.

I wanted to give this book 3.5 stars. The description on the jacket was off. I thought Albert was going to play a much larger role than he did - in fact only making an appearance in the last 100 pages or so. But I mostly did enjoy it. I loved reading about Victoria standing up for herself, but felt like Conroy was overwritten, the mother somewhat unbelievable, and the dog featured far too much in the story. Beautiful writing and I am looking forward to the PBS version of this book!