This book is such a cool and dark take on magic school stuff. There's loads of diversity among the characters, including the main character herself. I liked that she didn't immediately warm up to the people around her. She's a product of her environment and doesn't change just because things were potentially getting easier for her. Her ability to be lethal was a really cool point of her power, like "I could literally murder you but I won't. But I could." And seeing how that affected her interactions with her peers was fun to see.

The worldbuilding was phenomenal, I loved learning about the Scholomance and all of the monsters within. I felt like it took a bit too long to explain what the big fight/climax was gonna be, but I was able to guess it earlier than it was said. That made it so the book didn't really feel like it was going nowhere (as long as it still got to that point, which did take a bit to get there.) So the book didn't feel like I was wasting my time. 

Once the characters could see what was going to happen, things picked up quickly and I read the last 35-40% of the book in one sitting. The ending was good, though I wasn't sitting at the edge of my seat to see what happened. I wouldn't have been annoyed to put it down if someone needed something from me. 

The character development felt real and wasn't rushed. There were some references to modern things that felt kind of "how do you do fellow kids" but only bc I wasn't expecting to see the lord of the rings movies or "cute cat videos" referenced in a magic school book, but it wasn't anything annoying or blatantly terrible like your grandma taking a picture of you in your prom dress and saying "damn girl you look like a snack, no cap!" Y'know what I mean? 

An issue I ended up having was there were several instances in the book where I just couldn't entirely understand what was being said, like sentences were just worded oddly and it wasn't concise? And the run-on sentences got out of hand at some points. 

"And I know nobody gets to live or not live because they deserve it, deserving doesn’t count for a thing, but the point was, I now felt deep in my heart that I was in fact a better human being than Magnus or Todd, and hooray, all the prizes for me, but that wasn’t helpful when what I actually needed were reasons why I shouldn’t just wipe them out of existence."

That's 71 words and six commas, for one sentence. It could've been split up into at least two sentences? I get the point being made but uhhhh. That was far from the only one. Not a gripe big enough to ruin the book but it was off-putting and happened enough to not be uncommon. 

Anyway, overall it was a fun read with a cool world, and I'm still curious to see how the next two books in the series go. It wasn't the most striking or action packed thing I've read but I still enjoyed it and I'd like to know more about the characters and how their senior year goes. I just probably won't make the next two books and immediate priority.