A spectacular example of bad writing.

The plot is so far removed from our four heroes that they spend more time rehashing events and spouting their pet theories than they do on any kind of action. Everything happens off page (and this is not a dig at the epistolary format, I happen to love it) and what does happen isn't very interesting. Everyone speaks the same way, so I kept forgetting if I was reading Cecy's chapter or Kate's, and then gave up checking after a while because it didn't make any difference.

Everything felt forced. Like Lady Sylvia staying in Paris, which only happened because she would have solved the mystery in five minutes and our four idiot heroes had to bumble around long enough to make this a novel.

I don't know if the book was really boring or the audio was really boring, but I listened to 49% of this and realized I didn't care about anything.

I'm so sad to say it, but I didn't like a V E Schwab book.

I didn't like Olivia. She was mean spirited and nosy and . . . that was it. She was flat.
The rest of the cast was even more flat. Why did Hannah and Edgar even care about that fucking house?
The cheap plot devices . . . sucked.

Spoiler

An orphan wishing for a letter from her family gets one? She stumbles into the other Gallant because Matthew doesn't warn her, and his only excuse is that he thought if he didn't tell her that she would just leave the house? That's so stupid it doesn't even bear thinking of. I'm getting the vapors.

I didn't like the use of a word that means brave as the house name. It felt awkward and didn't work for me.
The story isn't grounded in a world. There are cars, but Olivia walks around with a candle. I couldn't figure out if there was electricity, but she can run a hot bath inside her room.
I'm putting it on my young adult shelf because it feels like a cheap coming-of-age, but it doesn't have any of the hope or forward movement I usually associate with YA.
The ending didn't feel sad, or hopeful, or much of anything really.
A forgettable book.

This was like a bingo card of things I hated.

Kid whose only personality trait is being poor, check
Shaming the mother for being a stripper, check
Shaming the mother for teen pregnancy, check
Kid beats up high school bully immediately upon getting to school, check
"no one understands me even though I keep beating people up" check
Love at first sight, check
Girl inexplicably nice to boy and mean to popular kids, check
No fucking thank you.

Gave up at 7%.

This was . . . a lot.

We've got Mandy, who is so desperate for a baby that she gets sucked into the creepy world of the mother of her supposedly dead Match, and we're all supposed to think it's a happy ending when she has a baby with this man and it wakes him from his vegetative state. Ew, ew, ew, and no.

Then there is Christopher. This storyline is the only reason I finished the book, because my first thought upon hearing the premise was "what if your Match is a murderer" (the second question was "what if they're dead" so at least Mandy's story gave me that) and I was delighted by his intro chapter. I thought it was exceedingly lame that he falls in love, but I was surprisingly pleased by the fact that his cop girlfriend kills him and gets away with it in the end.

Then there's Jade who I could never root for after she maxed out her credit cards and avoided her family to fly to Australia WITHOUT TELLING HER MATCH SHE WAS COMING. Too stupid to live, this girl, and I hated all of these scenes. She deserves the idiot she ended up with.

Nick's story was THE WORST. He's matched with a man but he's straight, which could have been an interesting study of how fluid sexuality and gender and attraction is, but instead it's a fucking mess. After all the bullshit, and being bullied into staying with his girlfriend because she is having his baby, he finds out the baby was actually fathered by their married friend, who doesn't want to raise the baby, AND THEN SHE FUCKING DIES, so that Nick can conveniently take the baby he always wanted to go be with his match in New Zealand. I feel gross just thinking about it.

And then Ellie. All of her conversations with her Match felt fake, and I thought it was bad writing, (and it kind of is) but then you learn that he is just playing her to ruin the whole match business. Which, fine, I get it, but it felt much too dramatic for what it actually was. That fucking final confrontation was such an insane villain reveal that it was more laughable then tense. I did absolutely love that she just killed him though. I did not see that coming, and I'm here for it. I wish it hadn't been broadcast, because that seemed hella fake, and it would have been more fun if she got away with it, but at least she didn't go to jail.

Overall, the chapters were too short to really get into any depth with the characters, so it just felt like a soap opera. All drama, no substance.

I loved this trilogy in middle school, and it's still just as eerie and atmospheric as it was to me half a lifetime ago. The plot is pretty standard (chosen girl goes on quest to save the kingdom) but the details make it fun. I love that there is an Old Kingdom where magic still exists just on the other side of the wall from Ancelstierre, a world with cars and boarding schools and near-disbelief in the old ways. The bells and the gates of death still give me chills.

My re-read of the audio version by Tim Curry was so good.

Atrocious from top to bottom. It could have been cute that the cousins made a joke at the end of the second book about not being able to imagine what they would be like ten years in the future, and the next book being ten years later, but instead we went from a teen book to a simpering mother book, and it absolutely did not work.

The writing is awful, like fourth graders mimicking British accents for a school project.

The entire book is flagrantly sexist. At one point Thomas, supposedly loving husband of Kate, disparages her as follows in a letter to his best friend: "Kate thinks that all we need do is restore your children to you, persuade Georgy to take a repairing lease somewhere discreetly foreign, locate a Department of Lost Articles specializing in children of good breeding, and our problems will be solved. I fear the nursery is softening her brain." Ah yes, there is nothing I love more than a man who thinks his wife is entirely useless once they have children.

In lieu of a review, I will just let you know that I sent my sister approximately 400 text messages while reading this book and cried into nearly as many tissues.