OOOOH that was FUN. with some minor questionable aspects but mostly...kind of all my favorite aspects of a book, lmao. mostly.

when i was a kid i was SOOO into secret schools for special kids. magic schools (yeah including that one unfortunately), superhero schools, supervillain schools, whatever you can think of. i feel like this is the adult successor to that, which i really enjoyed. it felt like a morbid throwback to those kinds of books, even with a lot of the same character archetypes. unfortunately the romance also felt about as juvenile as something from a children's book, and so did the dumb "rivalry" between cliff and helkampf, who i really hated because of his lack of any character other than being a generic shitty weirdo who likes killing. even the main characters' targets were evil in kind of an enjoyable, more realistically hateable sense, but helkampf was just. eyeroll.

mixed feelings on the other characters. cliff was okay, i enjoyed him even if he was kind of a plain everyman (guess that could be the point of him). sadly i liked gemma the least out of the main characters. her romance with cliff was boring and the conclusion of her storyline was not very satisfying. her backstory was at least a little genuinely sad though. i LOVEDDD doria to the surprise of literally no one. best character by far i love stuck up divas with questionable morals who are way smarter than they seem. she was so so much fun.

i know the book was set in the fifties but i really didn't love people repeatedly bringing up how weird and strange a man dressing in women's clothes would be and how immediately people would realize that

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(though idk if they were trying to satirize that by actually having a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman but it didn't fully come through. also like. korta being humiliated posthumously forever because he sleeps with Men Dressed As Women!!! what a sick pervert!!!! was also not. um. not great.)

look i will say, i LOVEDDDD the latter half of the book. my Favorite part of so much stuff i read is when a plan comes together perfectly or a character has to perfectly pretend to be someone else and they get away with it or the villain falls right into a trap that was set for them and the latter half of the book was just THAT, on EVERY SINGLE PAGE. so devious so awesome i am grinning like crazy.

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and me who doesn't really enjoy mysteries figured out (most of) how cliff was gonna get rid of fiedler before he even did so. THAT BIT WITH THE TWO PAGE CONFESSIONAL THOUGH???? I SERIOUSLY GOT A FUCKING DUMBASS EVIL GRIN. AND CLIFF'S SPONSOR REVEAL...i got sad gemma didn't end up using the bolton strid though. i knew about it from a tumblr post and when they namedropped it i went OOHOOHOOHOO

i didn't mind switching perspectives between the stories, but it did confuse me how gemma and cliff were seemingly so intertwined and doria had next to no interaction with either of them. i was expecting them to become some sort of little murder trio or for their targets to have secret history with each other or something but she barely ever crossed paths with them? it was kind of confusing.

really entertaining book except for the parts i winced a little at. but it was a lot of fun honestly and god that latter half was delicious.

also this author wrote the pina colada song?????