I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, Carriger has an interesting idea about the heroine's journey and gives some really thoughtful breakdowns of both the heroine's and the hero's journey. On the other hand, she falls into the same trap as those who espouse the hero's journey as the only tale around: that all stories are the same (2) stories, that you just have to mash things around to make them fit and that proves we're all just telling the same stories, and that the heroine's journey doesn't need every step and then turning around and insisting this or that is absolutely necessary to the story. In an attempt to show where the heroine's and hero's stories are distinct she also draws some weird lines between what they can and can't be (genre, tropes, character arcs) and really pounds it home, which to me argues for a lack of imagination. (Which is, again, part of my issue with the hero's journey true-believers.)

On top of that, the book is incredibly voice-y and I find Carriger annoying. I admittedly DNFed her Parasol Protectorate series bc I was barely hanging on through the character voices and then she threw in a ridiculous trope I hate and I bailed. That said, my biases aside, I still think the story would have benefitted from being a little more clean, with less cute asides. Frankly, it would have been shorter, which would have been nice, because a decent chunk of it just starts to feel like filler to make the book bigger. If you think grown adults who drop their Hogwarts households unprompted and literally write "haha" into their text are totally cool, you won't mind. I minded, greatly.

In general, I think the book's topic is interesting and I learned quite a bit from it. The way it was done was imperfect and at times downright annoying. I'd like to have a long journal article about it for review, but I wouldn't put myself through reading this book again.