3.75 stars-ish.

Started off a little slow, though the exposition does mostly play into the story. Honestly the romance was kinda meh, but sweet enough. The B&B, though? It's totally one of my new favorite fictional settings.

Very cute, and definitely believable. A great middle-grade novel; not life-changing but a reasonably worthwhile read.

Too much backstory; the current plot was too dependent on past events for my taste. Considering Munroe's mission - that's another thing that bothered me: it's kind of hard to feel connected to a protagonist who's always referred to by their surname - the narrative felt too straightforward with too little suspense. Also, for a supposedly "ruthless" individual she was really quite emotional.

Brilliantly planned and sensitively executed, this book actually deserves its popularity. Strong themes; really drives home how interlocked everything and everyone really is. A condensed but effective read.

Some weird sentence constructions and misplaced modifiers - I found myself frequently stopping to reread a phrase to try and make sense of it. The POV was kind of confusing too - essentially a nonexistent fourth sister: an outside narrator who is nonetheless included in their "we." I can understand the choice, but I wouldn't have done it.

The choppy, childish narration would be more appropriate for a boy of six or seven, rather than eleven. Also, Michael was quite a brat.

Great POV choice, dead Sutton's ghost/spirit/soul. Those "friends" are definitely trouble. Poor Emma, who didn't sign up for all this. The reveals were essentially given away pages (or sometimes just paragraphs) before the actual reveal, which I was not really into.

The suspense/withheld information was pretty badly handled; it made the beginning read like the start of a sequel, which didn't really work for me. It took me a while to warm up to Blake, too. The setup's not too bad, though.

2.5 stars.

The writing was hard to really flow with, as a reader. The subplot was Clara and Johannes was kinda cute but not necessarily essential to the story. Honestly, I didn't understand what was going on between Jeanette and Hart half the time.

If the suspended romantic resolution was meant to create UST, it didn't really work. But at least Riley was quite sweet, and funny too. But really, what is it about artistic mothers named Claire?