Opens by discussing a medical topic in a way I found uncomfortable.

I cannot stand the narrator and can’t read a whole book from their perspective

The backstory involves a deal with hell and also aliens, then (at least in the first fifth of the book) it's a contemporary story about a trans kid who has run away from home, with hints of what feels like a slow burn sapphic romance. To me, it feels like the skipped the (extremely interesting) hell story, involves the most mundane bits possible on the alien story, and I'm not in the right headspace for a transphobia story. The combination as a whole doesn't fit what I want to read right now, so I stopped. I only tried reading it because of the Hugo nomination, since the description alone was enough to tell me this probably wasn't going to be a book I'd like. 

I don’t like the worldbuilding and couldn’t get into the book. The worldbuilding felt uneven, explaining things which wouldn’t actually need to be explained if they were true, while not explaining the kinds of things which would be fascinating to know.

Can tell it’s not for me, stopping now.

The early worldbuilding annoyed me a bit because things were constantly compared to their “old Earth” counterparts. It kept pulling me out of the story. The story seems fine, just a bit past my comfort zone.

I stopped reading because I’m concerned that this book where a secret and powerful group of magic users whose power is propped up by a secret location where children (and some adults) are tortured and killed in New York City might be antisemitic. It’s at least playing way more into blood libel than I’m comfortable reading.

I hated almost every character. Sydney and her employer are the most sympathetic characters among the magicians, and it seemed like most of the other magicians were meant to be somehow repulsive. Sydney are her employer are also the only magic users who are in the competition but not part of the established houses. At least as far as I got in the book, the members of the houses are varying degrees of unpleasant, from just generally complicit in the pain caused by their magic, all the way up to one being a serial killer who thinks his method of direct murder is better than the secret torture dungeon. I don’t know if he’s right or wrong, but I’m uninterested in the debate.

The main character disguises herself as a (specific) boy with a disability she doesn't have. That was iffy enough, but my hell no point was when she bound her chest for five days with no breaks and then kept going through the pain. I'm not interested in watching a character either slowly distort her ribcage through unsafe binding practices, or mysteriously have it just be painful but have no other consequences.

It's very slow to start and I'm having trouble getting into it. I generally have trouble with YA contemporary and this feels more YA contemporary/fantasy than I'd like.

It begins with an ableist and classist comment which was wholly unnecessary, and then didn’t manage to hook me after.