I loved how this book was earnestly a work of ethnography and analysis and also simultaneously written for an audience that would be turned off by too much jargon and maybe just wanted to read it because they liked crafting.
The relationship between Judaism, Jewish crafts, and Jewish crafters remains striking and, while I did not always see myself in the fiber artists of this book, I really appreciated Eichler-Levine's understanding of what it is they do.

I'm really enjoying this series, now that I've actually started it. This was a great sophomore book, building on much of what happened in the first book, but with even better pacing and character development. Of course, now I'm at the end of what has been written and I have so many more questions, including when will the next book come out?

I wanted to like this book more than I did and I don't know if it was an expectation problem or a "sometimes you don't know you're not in the mood for a book until you take two weeks to read it" problem or the pacing didn't work for me.
What Thomas did by the end was really well done and a fascinating take on the Pan mythos and...the point at which I was wholly bought in to this story was, according to my kindle, at the 88% mark.
Idk, I just...sometimes books don't land the way you wish they did.

I...what was this book and why was it written?
It wasn't poorly written, but I also didn't understand the story and the why and what Bear was trying to do with it or why I should be invested in these characters. It was a slog and I am not the "person who puts down a book that I'm not enjoying" yet because while life is too short to read terrible books, I'm a pretty fast reader and it's not that much of an investment and I did want to know if anything happened in the end.
Bah.

Do you miss the fab five gently giving advice and having salty opinions at each other? Cool, this book is a good cure for that. It's written very strongly in Tan's voice and I wonder whether the audiobook would have been more fun because it is very chatty.
But still fun.

If this was a work on AO3, all the tags would be about how slow the burn is. Because it is SO SLOW. Glacial, as if that's a thing to say about burns.
The fact that this is the slowest burn I've read all year SAYS something.
Having said that, the bees were delightfully fun and I enjoyed the story very much. Shoutout to the British village of queer people, it made me extremely happy.

First of all, how DARE you?
Second of all, I love this series so much and I am so very excited to see where it goes.

I’ve identified the reason my husband loves this series and it because El, the main character, is grumpy and curmudgeonly and RELENTLESSLY committed to doing the right thing. The drama in the series comes from the story of a good person who struggles to be good when being evil is always easier choosing to be good again and again. It’s kind of brilliant and also deeply fun to watch goodness spread like an ideologically transmitted infection and it works. 
It’s ALSO another story about the trauma  of being the hero in the same vein of Rowell’s Carry On trilogy. If El is basically the redemption of the Slytherin, Orion is the trauma of the chosen one when there’s no one left to fight. Novik handles it very differently from Rowell, not just because she’s interested in telling a very different story, but also because this book isn’t inherently about what comes next. I’m fascinated to see what the next one does. 

Of course I loved it. It was thoughtful and sweet and kind of about traumatized characters. 
Rowell continues her critique of Rowling here, specifically in asking how coping with the trauma of people constantly trying to murder you might mess up your life a little bit and also in looking at Penelope as the gifted child coming to terms with being wrong. 
Anyway, it’s gorgeous and I am very pleased. 

I do not think of myself as a thriller reader, and yet Huang has had me captivated by this story in every installment. Partially that's because she clearly cares so deeply about the characters and winds the characters themselves into the thriller parts of the story so that every heist is also a chance to learn about people and every mystery creates new and interesting cracks in Russell's facade.
I want to know more about everything and also admire how much control Huang has over cautiously handing out more tidbits.
I really hope there are more.