i love love loved this book so much when i was in elementary school. so when i saw it the other week at the thrift store, i got super excited to read it again. and it was still fun this time around! i enjoyed it, for the most part. objectively, it's more ok than amazing but that's ok.

some things were rather confusing and inconsistent (like ....how did the kids have bedroom windows for piper to fly through when they are underground?) and some things changed with no warning (like in the beginning, we got conrad's pov and he seemed just as mean as everyone thought he was, and he only got depth once he revealed everything to piper) and many of the characters were one dimensional. also, especially near the end, there is...quite an excess of exclamation points. and i suddenly understand why i used so many in my writing at age 9.

also all the characters are so young??like i know it's a middle grade book but dear god lily is six and jasper is five! and reading that as a kid was fine but now it's like...oh my god they're so little. why are they experiencing situations. and on a similar note i saw a couple reviews saying that this was way too dark for the intended age group. i want to mention that 1) kids like dark things. like when i found out there was death and gore in the original grimm tales i was thrilled. 2) kids can handle dark things! like there's a lot of people who, as adults, are terrified of coraline but as kids were just like ok yep creepy portal fantasy. that's kinda cool. 3) i read this a billion times as a kid and enjoyed it way more then than i do now.