It took me an embarrassingly long time to read this. I got it as a christmas gift 3 years ago, tried reading it several times and took it with me on almost every trip I went on; determined to finally read it on the train/plane. For some reason I never managed to get past the first chapter, but something posessed me at the beginning of this month (and by something I mean 2 friends and I starting a book club and deciding to read this book) and I finally pushed past the first chapter and oh boy was it worth it. I have never heard a single bad thing about this book and turns out that the masses were right.

The cast of characters is an absolute delight. They're so deeply and vividly developed they're virtually jumping off the page while reading and I fell in love with them so fast. While I didn't love the fact that they were all so young, it wasn't that hard to mentally age them up a bit while reading and their masterful characterisation more than makes up for it. 
Both the characters as individuals and their dynamics between each other are so wonderful and I had a blast reading about them.

I've never read a book that does such an incredible job at planting seeds and returning to them, at picking leads back up that it establishes earlier in the book and then fully delivering on whatever it set up. It does an absolutely amazing job at being tightly paced yet leaving enough room for the cast to shine. 

The entire book is incredibly well developed, from the world to the plot to the characters, and I'm beyond obsessed with it.