⠀⠀✧ • ° . ◦ *⠀┊ three and a half stars.



⠀for me, there is no question this book is 3.5 stars. to my understanding this will be a series and i will most likely continue with it. ( * i feel as if the majority of my gripes will not continue in the second book based on what has happened in this book). with that said, i rolled my eyes far too many times and swore this book wouldn’t receive a rating higher than 3 stars for 75% of the novel. the last fourth of the book really saved it for me.

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀and here’s why. . .


⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ the beginning was extremely slow. i don’t mind if a novel takes a hot minute to get to the main story as long as what we are reading isn’t, well, boring and seemingly useless. if i hadn’t sat down with the intention of diving into the majority of the book, i’m not sure if i would have picked it back up. for what it’s worth, i’m glad i did.

⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ between the introduction to the adjacent worlds and our main character’s inner monologue, the repetition was honestly outrageous. obviously, world building takes time and inherently calls for redundancy but sara holland seemed to repeat the same bits of the world and magic systems. the main character repeated her trauma over and over, but hardly added anything to it.

⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ our main character’s inner monologue was borderline insufferable for the majority of this book. between moaning about her trauma, trust issues, and the guy she was in love with, it was a wonder she never had any friends! she didn’t strike me as the “i’m not like other girls” type, but she is still a “i’m different” type that you may find in fanfics. she refers to herself as a freak (because of the trauma that was entirely out of her hands) and uses her short hair as an example for that. let’s not talk about the doc martens and leggings every day (girl, i do it too. you aren’t special).

⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ i found some of this rather predicable. i don’t necessarily have a complaint with this, but any “twists” i saw dozens of pages before hand. i’ve also gotten used to how jkr implants hints throughout her books so i’ve been trained to look for important things, haha.

⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ the good news, kind of, is that there is lgbt+ rep in this. with that said, it was just there and never impacted the story—which is fine in some cases. sara holland, however, seemed to include subtle remarks hinting to sexuality every so often and then just left it. our main character is bi and we see her confess her feelings about a guy and occasionally flirting with a girl. this girl is a lesbian, a fact only given to us in sly hints. her uncle is gay and married to his partner but... if you read this... you will understand, lmao. i don’t knows, it almost came off as tweaking character’s sexuality for inclusion points.

⠀⠀⠀⠀❥ ┊ this was my march book of the month book so i solely went of the description that they provided. as a warning for other readers, this was a bit more frightening and thriller - like than i anticipated. it is no secret this novel deals with murder, but that wasn’t the scary part. this is partly on me because i didn’t think to look too far into the scare factor (mainly because i don’t care) but i was more “scary” than expected.

↠ botm hardback
↠ 03.27.20 — 03.29.20
↠ annotated? yes
↠ readathon? n/a