I do not know what to think of this book. It's not what it looks like. The opening felt very Twilight-esque, but I don't think that Bella Swan would reference Laocoon or Ionic columns in the middle of a crisis the way Ray does. The setting is kind of post-apocalyptic (in a world where "Carthaginian hell" is an expletive and "Spartan" is a compliment) and there's a police force trying to exterminate demons & vampires, and the main character works at a bakery (so there are a lot of baked goods involved in the plot), and the magic (?) system was so incredibly confusing that I couldn't keep track of what was going on half the time.

I will say that this *did* feel very McKinley. Lots of digressions, not entirely linear storytelling, very thoughtful and introspective main character, interesting and uncertain romantic progression. Also strong themes of the beauty of ordinary things and how it's worth to go on living because of those you love and the simple lovely things of everyday life. It's an adult book, though, unlike her others (that is, not all the sexual content is off-page, though personally I don't think the book needed what's there and it could have all been off-page! & there's some swearing and other adult content), which felt very weird. As if the vampires didn't already make it weird. (Plus, the main character never officially broke up with her boyfriend even though she was sort of involved, though never explicitly, with someone else, and that really bothered me.)

If I were to ally myself with a vampire, I would probably check to make sure he wasn't going around killing other humans, & I'd definitely make him tell me a little more about exactly why this other vampire was trying to kill him and why he needed my help and what the actual point of my whole adventure was. At the very least so the readers of my book could also understand what the point was. I guess I'm just different. Clearly Ray was unconcerned with such things.

To be fair, her narrative voice was very compelling & the development of her affinity to sunshine was great. I just... wish she had asked some questions and made certain people answer them. I still don't know why the bad guy was the bad guy, except that he was a vampire (but then so was one of the good guys).

I was quite annoyed by the ending, perhaps because there doesn't really appear to be one. The main conflict (whatever that was) had ended but there were clearly more things going on and no clear resolution to various relationships, and then it was over.

I guess I'd only recommend this if you are an adult who likes Robin McKinley and doesn't mind vampires in books. I think that is a very small segment of the book-reading population. If you're in that segment, though, you'll probably enjoy this book; despite my complaints I had a thoroughly fun time listening to it.