If you're down for a teen gothic mystery where the vibes are on point throughout, you're in for a good time. If you're still on the fence about young women falling in love with ageless immortal metaphysical concepts, ehhhhh. I know everyone's still trying to figure out the morality of it all, but if Death's been following you around since you were a baby only to hook up with you once it was societally acceptable, it gives off a weird vibe.

That aside, it was almost difficult for me to finish this book. I didn't really grow to love Signa, as she spends the first half of the book being mad at Death for literally just doing his job and really just seemed so petulant. When she finally gets some character development she is more tolerable, but even then her personality didn't get any more endearing.

I called the Sylas being Death twist literally the moment we meet him. Once you set up a character dressed "black as pitch" while also showing Death as a dark mass of shadows, it's really not hard to connect the dots. Especially when this man does not interact with anyone at all other than Signa. I think the killer being Percy landed well, though the twist was spoiled for me.

I think out of all the Lincoln nominees I have read, this one is probably the weakest so far. It will definitely appease fans of the paranormal romance genre, but I think all of it was lost on me. 

This book called me a nerd and started a symphony of screams in my brain from a troupe of tortured souls. A tour de force!

As far as animal survival fiction goes, it's passable. I feel like I've read others that went a bit deeper with their ideas, like Watership Down or Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I feel like though our characters so through many trials, adversities, and peril, they stay relatively static. There's a sickly sweetness to them where most feel like plush toys rather than actual animals. I know it's probably meant to emit a sense of a strong community where everyone looks out for each other, but one would think there would be more contention as the dangerous pile up. I feel like so many animals were interchangeable mainly due to how there weren't many diverse personalities.

The pace is positively sluggish to the point where I wanted to put the story down and not look back, but somehow I just kept reading. It honors its conservationist message and highlights the human threats against wildlife well, but I'm not sure if today's children will have much interest in the presentation of these issues.