I get that this might be redeemed at some point, but the adoption tropes are pretty cringey. From "We found you wrapped in rags" to "You were our wish granted" it was just too much for me to take. Now i think he's going to end up being partially a tree, and identity separate from adoptive parents will be addressed, but I still can't wade through all this to get to the magic. 

The characters are nice enough, the plot is...nice enough. But there's nothing about this story that's catching my interest right now. 

Seems well written, but a slow coming of age story isn't my cup of tea right now. 

It's a very cute first crush flutters kind of book, but 53 pages in and still nothing at all has happened. I can't take this monotony. 

This book is set mid-lockdown, and I can't handle a book that heady right now. 

Text is too small and sentences too long for me to feel willing to wade through the complex family dynamics. 

Honestly, got only a few pages in but just didn't feel grabbed. 

starts VERY slow. At this point, it's still mostly descriptions of food and small vignettes of family life. I don't have patience for this. 

Too arcane. I know arcane is literally in the subtitle, but this was just too melancholy for my current mood. 

Seems to be a sweet adventure of the very standard "children in the forbidden forest" sort, with hobbits (aka snergs) as the primary magical being. But it just didn't grab me. Maybe because the children were a bit two dimensional, maybe I'm just not in the mood for whimsy.