Started off strong but the turn the story ended up taking had me bored for most of it. I wish there was more romance but relationship building that we got without it being explicitly romantic was still nice for what it was. The characters are also nice and the ending was very sweet. I haven't seen the movie yet but I've heard it's different where the chacterizations of Sophie and howl are concerned.

This isn't bad, it just needed to cook a little bit longer. The character writing (mainly Ruying's) and worldbuilding needed more work, and there should've been less telling and more showing in a number of notable points, all of which would've served to give the story and what it was trying to do more depth. The end was nice and tied everything up well.
Lastly, after reading it, it's definitely not "the colonizer romance" some people claim it to be. 

Better paced than the first one. And I'm eager to read the 3rd book when it comes out. 

The writing wasn't for me.

The book is pretty boring because addie is boring and her life is boring save for a handful of experiences here and there. I so wish she'd done more or we'd got to be there the very few times that she did do more with her life, bc it would've made for a more engaging read. I appreciated her resiliency towards luc a lot and similarly I think her desire to keep living despite the confines of her deal making her life more miserable, would have hit harder internally if we'd got to experience more of her life (not just her relationships) with her rather than hear about how she felt about jf after the fact.