My main beef with this book is the ridiculously high standards that I had going in based on the comparisons to Ninth House and A Deadly Education. I own and adore both of those series so I had unreasonably high hopes for this book. While this book is good and I see where the comparisons to those two lie I think it's more fair to just call it a dark academia book centered around lunar magic and secret societies. Let it stand on its own for itself.  
With that being said my actual comments on the reading experience are mostly positive especially once I got into it. I think there's a good amount of symbolism and parallels woven into this story that flies over my head just due to the sheer volume of magic-related world-building. The actual world building is not extreme but the magic system being so aligned with the moon and tides and there's gods but the gods are also tides and then theres also flowers involved and sub disciplines and and and.... It was a bit overwhelming at first. Once I got a bit more of a grip on it the book became more enjoyable but it is something to note. 
Character-wise the dynamics between characters are pretty YA classic but with enough twists to keep it moderately new and fresh. Emory is probably quite relatable to many younger girls/women due to the themes throughout the book of her feeling less than and unwanted and mediocre just because she doesn't hang the stars in the sky like her larger-than-life best friend who gets all the attention. By the end of the book, I loved Baz and wanted more of his storyline because just as the plot got a hair predictable his storyline started to veer into places I never would've guessed.
Lovely casual queer rep going on in here as well. 
Overall would recommend and will be reading any more books in the series.