I LOVE IT ITS SO SWEET

i love this book so dearly. i wish i’d read it earlier than now, so a version of me who was younger and more insecure could see a bit of himself in Yadriel. i cant even write a real review of this rn except that the last 20% had me almost constantly either getting chills or tearing up. nearly started crying in public when i finished this. might write a real review someday

this might be long?? i have a lot to say about this book.
firstly: i enjoyed about the first third of it a lot!! haven’t enjoyed YA fantasy (or fantasy in general) in a while, i liked Natasha as a main character,

Elodie as an antagonist

(Elodie is still my favorite character from this honestly), and the worldbuilding seemed really fascinating!!
unfortunately,,, it didn’t stick the landing on the rest of the story. poor Braxton. my mans got no personality and i dont even remember if we got a description of him besides “yeah he’s really really hot”.

also i despise the love triangle subplot of Natasha, Braxton, and Killian. i can tell it’s leading to something where she’ll have to choose. yknow Natasha…. you have two hands and those hands can be held by both of them

. also this book, towards the middle, had very sudden vaguely feminist themes that were… implemented really awkwardly? like on an extremely basic idealogical level i agree, but it hardcore went into territory of “lets degrade woman from history for doing silly things to impress men” like… do you not think women did do some fashion things because they just thought it looked nice? jeez. (also, there was an uncomfortable use of “female” in a sentence where “woman” would have honestly fit better. idk it just always makes my skin crawl a little bit when i see that).

there was also an extremely off-page queer relationship between Song and Anjou, who has been missing for a while at the time this book takes place. soon (and i mean quite soon. there is almost no dialogue from Song post-relationship reveal) after this is revealed, Song goes missing. im not saying that this is true “bury your gays”, but… it’s giving some uncomfortable tinges of that.

god i wanted this book to be so good. hopefully other people will enjoy it more than i. :)

got this without having to place a hold after seeing it on Libby through their Together We Read program, and i thought “why not”. turns out i really didnt like it :/ despised the main character and just was getting really awful vibes around the way the character of Bobak was being handled. now im past when the book was extremely available, someone was waiting for it in libby, my libby hold on Cemetery Boys had just come in and i decided not to subject myself to this book any longer :/

had to read this quickly, unfortunately, but it was still quite interesting :) some of the metaphors felt like they were a bit too heavy-handed, but i liked both Whimsy and Faerry pretty well. the writing was also beautiful and quite whimsical

unfortunately i went into the book admittedly not expecting to like it, but it ended up being a pretty fun small-town mystery !! :D i did find Luce to be a bit annoying at times,

YES YOU SHOULD WANT TO SEE YOUR RECENTLY-KIDNAPPED NIECE MORE THAN YOU SHOULD WANT TO HANG OUT WITH YOUR FRIEND YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON

along with really wishing Ashleigh and Anders had gotten more characterization than just “we are Luce’s friends”. but honestly the Fanya POVs made it all worth it.

especially towards to end of the book, when she’s learning about the human world and inspecting books and the tv? beautiful, adored Fanya

so yeah!! nothing really stood out to me enough to give this a 4-star-or-more rating, but i think people who like stories about small towns with secrets and some light spooks will enjoy this :)