Great, startling read

What a fun, scary, compelling story. I'm easily frightened so I mostly had to read this during daylight hours. There are so many clever, heartrending pieces to this; definitely for older children (no younger than 13 I'd say). In today's climate, I hope we would all be Jane McKeene.

Really enjoyed this book and how she makes it an every day thing for POC and gay characters to be fantasy/Greek heroes. I think Dread Nation was a little better, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope there are more given how it ends. If you tolerated the Percy Jackson series, you might enjoy this book better.

A nice, quick read when you want to escape and not think too hard. It felt like a chick flick in book form, and I was totally ok with that. It doesn't go very deep into potential problems of being in an interracial relationship, which again, I was ok with because it's not always as frought as the movies would have you believe, going off my own personal experience. I read this in the winter, but this would be a perfect Beach Read option.

This was a really interesting concept and fairly easy read. I finished the book because of those things, not because I felt very connected with the protagonists, which would have been my preference. There was just a little bit if world and character building lacking for me. I didn't realize we were turn of the century alternate-magical England until a quarter of the way through the book. I feel authors shouldn't be afraid to be more up front about that sort old thing. That said, the idea was so compelling, it did make up for it a little.

Good if you don't mind a ton of internal exposition

I loved Uprooted; by comparison, this book took too long to really get started and had WAY too many narrators. I honestly got a little angry when two more narrators were introduced halfway through the book. This might have been better as third omniscient.

It was pretty painful to read this as an ebook because I didn't realize how long it would be to get to the actual plot. I kept going because the reviews are so split down the middle and I was curious where I'd fall. I wish the first half had gone much faster, and I wish we didn't have to live in everyone's head, context switching every scene. At the end of the day, this was a pretty ambitious work, referencing tales like Rumplestiltskin, Persephone and Hades, Beauty and the Beast, and even Snow vs Summer. It's almost too much. But if you have time to savor your books, I can see how this would be an enjoyable read. Since I was reading this between non-leisure stuff, it was pretty stressful.

Interesting read

We are thrown into the fantasy/political mystery from the start with a murder of two parents. The result is a girl who loses all her color and the ability for people to see her. This story had grand ambitions that were mostly realized for me, but I admit, it was a confusing journeyand I'm not entirely sure I get all of it. I both appreciated and found the ending anticlimactic. There were certain thematic promises made early in the book that left me a little disjointed by the end; I seriously thought the author was angling for a sequel up until I realized there was an epilogue.