I read this book as a book club pick and it was so much fun to read this with friends.

This book had me extremely excited to read it after loving Cemetery Boys like no other book and greatly enjoying Lost in the Never Woods. And yes it totally delivered. This book is different in that it is more a full fantasy than a form of magical realism, although both I enjoy greatly. I loved how this world in this book felt very vibrant and full of interesting facts, without ever overwhelming me with overly complicated systems like high fantasy can sometimes do. All of the new information the book gave us I absolutely ate up and enjoyed learning more and more about how tings worked.

The characters were so much fun too. There were a lot of teens who all had their own interpersonal relationships and histories. I loved this compared to for example Hunger Games where the teens did not know each other. It made the betrayals even harsher between characters and the friendship even more fun to read about. 

I also want to mention that the way gender, especially Teo's, was handled in the book was so much fun. To just have a cast full of gender queer characters is always a delight to me. The way Teo also struggled with his appearance not being in line with his gender was extremely relatable. Having read this as a book club pick it was nice to have this book as a conversation starter about it. I had some lovely conversations because of it.

This book was great but I struggled with how open the ending was, I don't particularly enjoy open endings. Although I'll admit it makes me want to read book 2 immediately and I can't wait to have it in my hands when it comes out.

Concluding this was a great new YA fantasy to read that I can recommend to a lot of my friends.