Unlike anything I’ve read in terms of historical period/setting/focus. I loved the pacing of this book. I normally can’t read things in one sitting but I devoured the second half of this on the flight home from Rome and didn’t get tired of it one bit. I love that it was told from B’s point of view without you even realizing it thanks to N’s journals, and I loved the causal bisexual representation! So heartfelt and so human, so delicately and artfully done

I didn’t need to see Percy Jackson get college rec letters it feels wrong. Billing this as a sixth book in the best children’s OG series is a crime. It felt like I was reading modern fan fiction — references to TikTok and WandaVision??? Spare me. The characters felt overdone and overly cheesy, and the whole effort lost its charm. Disappointing. 

Hello miscommunication trope!!! I loved the story of this book: all the traveling, the exploring of cities, embracing the seasons, studying and drinking coffee and taking the bus. Mundanity of life at its finest and so romantic in that sense. However I wanted more from the characters. Idk if it’s a Scandinavian thing to not delve into emotions but I kept grasping for WHY these characters were doing what they were doing. WHY would Hugo and Thora fight? WHY did August and Thora get on so well when August’s friends don’t like Thora at all? I needed some more personality grit so I could support their miscommunication as a function of their inner workings, but I don’t think I saw their inner workings, even from their individual POVs. If that were fleshed out more (even with the result of further complication and more moral grayness!!), it would be an immediate 5 stars

The core idea of this book is cool: dark vs light, keepers of the old ways, and the power of the land and places; but the execution was a letdown. Characters appeared and acted with no apparent motivations, yet an understanding of some character development was assumed (told not shown vibes). Also, the whole magic system was so underdeveloped.

Every now and then, Will will be like, “oh and I had forgotten that I had such and such magical power,” or Merriman will say, “remember that you have this power” and Will is like, ah, of course, now I can fly!

Jumping between time is normally a classic fav for me, but here it was clumsy. The pacing on this was also weird. Some chapters flew by and days would pass in the timeline and others were perhaps too long and the pace of action would slow.

And how does it make any sense that five Old Ones were living in one teeny village in the UK and they just so happened to be the ones needed to hold back the Dark and find the other Signs (which also happen to be in the village in the UK)

I just couldn’t ever fully buy into this

Could not have predicted that I would love this book the way I did, but boy is it incredible. The video game content is so well done that it’s engaging and accessible to both “gamers” and non-gamers alike. I loved the brief time skips, and I think this book was truly PERFECTLY paced. Such an inventive story (in terms of game content and also plot), and I literally could not have guessed what would happen.

I also like that Sam and Sadie don’t end up together, because I think that would have cheapened the book’s focus on platonic love and connection, so Miss zevin was very wise for that. also the SHOOTING????? I gasped

THE book of the summer. 

Kinda funny to go back to the source after watching/hearing this story for a lifetime, especially considering there’s not much development how/why Scrooge changes beyond him saying that he’ll heed the Spirits’ lessons as they’re dragging him around (and mostly to get out of things). But, this was a perfectly charming book to carry around with me this weekend in London and particularly perfect to read with a christmas cocktail at a bar 

I never cry at books but when I clicked to go to the next page and it was over, I let out a little sob. The heartbreak mundane-ness (mundanity?) of life and death and “the full brass of being” 

I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared by a book before… but I also couldn’t bear to put it down. Completely intoxicating and sadistically captivating in the worst way. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a long time 

Sometimes I feel pressured to like books just because they’re hard to read/understand, but then I remember that the point of writing is to enable other people to understand and then I’m back to not liking books that overly complicated perhaps for the sake of a contemporary literary voice. Anyway, I felt like I didn’t know the characters— like I knew too much about their flaws and not enough about who they are and what they do. Also, I’m all for all vibes no plot, but I can’t find a through line other than a 40 year old fuckboy. Struggling to see how this is Sally Rooney core other than being Irish and vaguely gay

Cant tell if I’m not super passionate about it bc I read it during term and thus took 6 weeks to finish it or bc it just wasn’t all that it could have been. I DID enjoy reading this, and I was always excited for what came next, but I think maybe all the character jumping made me less connected? I would rly get into a viewpoint and then we’d leave them behind:( but maybe that’s life? A good read, but I wouldn’t say it’s one that is going to stick — which is not to say I didn’t enjoy!