Cool premise, very flat story.

A lot of fun misdirection, and Poirot is always welcome, even in a smaller role.

A fabulous cast of characters.

A beautifully written story, this is the kind of children's book that feels like it is meant for adults. The Taino people were nearly wiped out after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, this story imagines the normal life of a family before that tragedy.

This had been on my to-read list forever, and I finally picked it up because my boyfriend did study abroad in Buenos Aires and I wanted to pick his brain on how accurate it was. For what it's worth to you, every description I sent him he agreed with.

What I love most about this book is how duBois writes. All of the characters feel more magical than real people do--more observant, more clever, more hurt. I highlighted so many sentences just for the sheer joy of how she expressed a thought.

A fascinating, compelling, haunting story.

I won't lie, many of the pages of this book made me grit my teeth. But setting aside Harry's over-the-top word usage and his absolute disaster of a personality, he manages to be a character that you can root for, even if you don't like him (which is pretty impressive). I loved that he was desperately worried at 28 about all of the same things I, at 28, am worrying about, and I love that

Spoiler

he doesn't get the girl in the end, because he didn't deserve her, and he had to learn that lesson and grow

.

I'm also so glad I don't live in New York City.

So boring. Gave up after 42 pages because there was no plot, just a retelling of Jekyll and Hyde from Hyde's side. That should be thrilling, but it wasn't.