This book was fantastic in the first half. Truly. I was excited to see how these characters that I loved would meet with a fantasy world. Turns out, the fantasy world is filled with other characters, that I didn't particularly love, and the story, while definitively fairytale-esque, was unsatisfying and felt prophecy driven and predictable rather than as a result of meaningful and interesting character growth and decision making. It felt a lot like Charlie was dragged through the second half of the story, and while I liked the characters he was with, I never grew to love them. 

The thing is, I think the first half was pretty good. And I think the second half was pretty good. But when you put them together, they give you false expectations of each other. If the beginning of the story has set me up for a Trees of the Emerald Sea-like adventure, with brevity and a fairytale life to it, I may have fallen into the story of the second half with love. Or if the second half had followed the real life tone of the first half, I may have bought the fantasy world. The mix of the two left both halves feeling unsatisfying to me though.

Ultimately, the beginning gave me a lot of hope as to the kind of story this would be and the way I'd love the chatacters—but I feel my expectations fell short when we hit the fantasy, as it was overall unsatisfying from a story and character perspective. And that's a shame, because as a fantasy reader, I was looking forward to the second half with bated breath. By the time I got there though, I was unfortunately looking forward to the book being over with bated breath instead.