This was honestly extremely bizarre for me... it was short enough that the handling of the last-minute plot twist catastrophe was just kind of glossed over, and this novella features a shockingly long IKEA furniture building scene which felt so so weird given the time period this was supposed to be set in. Not my favorite of Dare's work.

I had a hard time getting into this one -- probably because I vaguely dislike Lemon as a narrator. Partially also because the story abruptly turned into X-Men (as stories about people with powers often do), and I lost some interest.

Overall, it was fine, but not as good as its predecessor.

I didn't realize going into this that it was a companion novel for Young's other book, so I haven't read it. However, being that it is a companion novel and not necessarily a sequel, I don't think my review would be that drastically changed by having read it.

Anyway.

This book was a book that I was really looking forward to that really honestly let me down. I cannot remember the last time I read a book in which the plot crawled so slowly in a way that left me so intensely bored. This entire book could have been no more than a few chapters without losing much at all. It would make a decent 45-minute episode of a tv show.

Tova and Halvard were interesting enough main characters but they were both surrounded by far too many side characters that I couldn't keep track of and just left me a little more confused. I genuinely feel like if this book was half the length and involved far less moping/ruminating in the forest, it would have made a fine novella. But this just didn't work at its current length.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

So I picked this up again when I heard about the TV show so I could figure out just how excited I was about the news. The answer is: this book is better than I remember it, and I'm pretty excited about the show. This by no means ranks on my top list of favorite books or series. It's what would happen if you took everything nuanced and exciting out of The Hunger Games. It's what would happen if you added just a tiny bit more plot to The Bachelor. So: decent, but not great.

At the same time, though, America and Maxon are super lovable characters and for someone who claims to not like this book that much, I sure do ship them a lot.