wardenred's reviews
850 reviews

We Could Be So Good was among my absolute favoritest reads last year, so needless to say, I was pretty damn excited for the sequel. In many ways, my high expectations paid off. This story is, once again, incredibly well-crafted, with evocative prose, clear character voices, deep characterization, relatable themes, and a good sense of setting/time period. My one big grip with it is, I just couldn’t connect with one of the two MCs, Eddie. I sympathized with the baseball slump he was in and the loneliness he was experiencing. I would absolutely call him a well-rounded character. But I just couldn’t get invested in him properly. There was a spark missing. And that, of course, means that it was pretty hard to get invested in the book’s main plot, too, given that it’s a romance. Oops.

I’m not 100% sure what went wrong here; in big part, I think it’s just that thing that happens sometimes. You just don’t vibe with the character, even if they seem cool and interesting, just like sometimes you just don’t vibe with actual people. But as I poke at this, I think it’s also, a tiny bit, the fault of the book itself. It’s generally slow-paced, but Eddie’s part is, at times, moving at a glacial pace, especially the parts that have to do with his relationship with his team and his baseball career in general. And that big slow part just isn’t too interesting. Nothing much ever happens. His teammates aren’t too likable. I think maybe if I was a huge baseball fan, or better yet if I simply *did* vibe with Eddie, I would’ve been okay with focusing on the “character study” parts of it all and enjoying the ride. As it was, I yawned a lot.

On the other hand, Mark’s part of the book was fire, and not a single line in his chapters left me indifferent. I loved every part of his arc: his grief and how he deals with it; his relationship with his queerness and his staunch desire to not lie about who he is; the way he isn’t naturally nice, but he hoards kindness and distributes it where it needs to be; the found family thing he’s got with the characters we know from the previous book (side note: I was SO happy to see them! I just wish there was more Nick!); the friendship he develops with George; the specific ways writing and reading matter to him. My lukewarm feelings for Eddie aside, it made so much sense that Mark started inching toward falling for him by writing about him.

Something I appreciated a lot: just like the first book in the series, this one’s got a grumpy/sunshine dynamic. But! It’s an *entirely* different grumpy/sunshine dynamic. Mark and Eddie, both apart and together, have rather little in common with Nick and Andy. Their individual drives, their chemistry, and their conflicts, inner and interpersonal alike, come from completely different places. This just goes to show how uniquely familiar tropes can be executed, even when it’s done by the same author within the same series.

Also, this novel is definitely a masterclass in showing so much deep characterization through utterly mundane actions, like shopping, dog walking, reading books and talking about them, eating at restaurants, etc. Those completely slice-of life bits were often my favorite. 

Anne of Green Gables was among the first books I’ve read in English, and I’ve been meaning to continue with the series for literal decades. Except somehow, every time I tried to do that, I started with rereading the first book and then promptly got distracted. So now I’ve made the impromptu decision to skip the reread and go straight for book 2, and finally, I’m one step farther! 😅

In many ways, I found the second book just as charming as the first. I think L.M. Montgomery’s writing truly shines when it comes to creating a sense of place, both in terms of describing the setting and populating it with quirky, colorful personalities. I enjoyed meeting familiar faces again, like Mrs. Rachel Lynde, and getting to know new awesome fictional people, like Mr. Harrison and Miss Lavender. The book is honestly so cozy, with most things working out for the better, and bad things always being survivable, and people finding understanding again and again, even when they’re off to a rocky start. Exactly the vibe I was after.

In terms of weaknesses, I feel like there wasn’t enough school. There was this big build-up to Anne starting off as a teacher in the school she used to attend, at just sixteen, and pretty much an entire chapter early on focused on her working up her courage to get through her first day in this new role, and then she could barely process that day immediately afterward. It all felt like this job was going to be a really big focus on the book. But while the storyline was surely present throughout, I feel it took a backseat to many others and Anne overall spent more time just hanging out with her friends and other locals, plus helping take care of the twins Marilla takes in.

Speaking of the twins, I wasn’t a fan of how both Anne and Marilla openly favored Davy, the problem kid, over the quiet, obedient Dora. I get how the kid prone to acting out needs more attention, but it shouldn’t come at the expanse of the other sibling. It felt like Dora was getting punished for being too good, and the only time a scene truly focused on her was when she was crying and uncharacteristically refusing to go to sleep. Overall, she just got so little development compared to her brother who was present so often, he was kind of getting obnoxious. Way to make me feel bad for a character both in terms of how she was treated by others within the narrative and how the author treated her!

Outside of that, though, I actually really, really loved seeing the daily life in Green Gables, the interactions between Anne and Marilla, the relationship they’ve developed. Their interactions were so enjoyable and sincere, and they’ve come such a long way from those early days! Matthew’s absence is definitely felt throughout the book, but it’s less of a gaping, unfillable hole I feared it would be. I also really loved the small interactions Marilla had with Diane, and that time all three of them joined forces in the kitchen (I still giggle remembering that scene).

Anne herself was somehow more… mellow? mild? then I expected her to be: still eternally optimistic and focused on seeing the beauty on the world, but without those sharper edges that kept getting her in trouble. I feel like she’s matured a lot faster than I’d expect her to, but then again, she lives in a time and place where it’s normal to become a teacher at sixteen, so it’s more than possible I’m imposing my modern sensibilities on her. She was still very much recognizable, very much Anne, and very much made me smile even when I was having shitty days. So thanks for that.

A fun, whimsical short romance where a faerie starts off trying to capture a dragon and ends up helping him, though not before some initial tension. Or, rather, they actually end up helping each other.  There is a bit of a fairy-tale feel here, with plenty of endearing details about magic, the characters’ different forms (they’re both shifters,) etc. Despite the novella size’s constraints, the setting felt vibrant and rich, with that nice feeling like the story was only just scratching the surface.

The romance itself felt kind of rushed. I feel like the author missed the opportunity to set up some hooks early on for the future catching of feelings. Instead, the focus was on the sexual chemistry, which is cool and all, but I’m just more into the romantic attraction side of things. And it’s always tricky to set one up in a natural, realistic way in a story so short, I recognize that! I didn’t have my expectations set on a super fluid romantic arc, or anything. I just would have appreciated a little more digging into the feelings.

This was sure a wild ride, and I still can’t decide whether I’ve ended up more confused or entertained. I definitely enjoyed the rich, inventive, exotic setting. It’s packed with great ideas, and this specific brand of undead assassins with their erased memories, laws, and rules immediately intrigues me. I think I’d actually love to read something else set in this universe, preferably something a tad slower pace, 100+ pages longer, and with more focus on exploring the ecosystem of Tal Abisi as a whole.

Other things I enjoyed include the whole wild “we’re bringing a version of you from the past and hiring you to kill her“ premise, and the even bigger mindfuck it eventually turned to. Some of the ways the author used modern slang, like “edgelords,” was really fun. I really loved how the setting’s folklore was used to both expand the worldbuilding and affect the unfolding story. The characters for the most part were really fun, though with the exception of Eveen and Sky, most of them were made memorable by their places in the plot and cool powers rather than personalities. The cast really ended up too large for a story this short. Actually, *everything* was too large for a story this short, come to think of it. Which, despite all the coolness packed here, led to a general feeling of overwhelm for me. Plus, I think there are some structural issues here, with new stuff constantly getting thrown in even as the plot was winding down. Again: overwhelming.

All in all, it’s been a fun bedtime story for several nights. The audiobook is good quality, the chase and battle scenes are all really exciting, and the setting is simply awesome. Perhaps it’s just that I prefer stories that are less rushed and leave more room for character development.

Fair warning: this review is largely an attempt to make sense of my super mixed feelings about this book. I liked parts of it a lot. I was lowkey confused by some. In some ways, I feel like I didn’t manage my expectations correctly, even though I did try to keep them low knowing that Bardugo is one of the most hit-or-miss authors for me. Maybe I let the marketing fool me and should have looked more at the reviews. Maybe I simply liked the ideas behind the book more than the execution.

This novel lured me in with a super interesting setting that I don’t think is super explored in historical fantasy: Spain at the time of the Anglo-Spanish War, with a close eye on the Jewish experience. Sadly, I don’t feel like the author took full advantage of all the opportunities this setting offered. There were definitely some interesting, engrossing details, but as the story progressed, a lot of them faded into the background, except for the more tropey ones, and resurfaced only occasionally, often in a sort of haphazard way. Like, “oh, by the way, friendly reminder that these are the historical details the story’s rooted in! Now back to your regularly scheduled scenes that could have taken place elsewhere with little to no change.”

This isn’t the only area full of missed opportunities. In terms of themes, this book feels like a jigsaw puzzle that is not quite complete. We’ve got a protagonist whose defining character trait is that she wants *more*, to the point that I’ve ended up with Fever Ray’s If I Had a Heart playing on repeat in my head whenever I think of her. We’ve got so many bad guys motivated by greed and/or thirst for power. We’ve got some (sadly minimal) discussion about empires and how their constant expansions are also very much about wanting more. And it all never *quite* comes together into the exploration of this big issue on both large-scale and individual level that I began to inspect when this “let’s talk about wanting more” button got pressed and pressed and pressed early on. Other stuff just kept on interfering and watering down the messages.

Structurally, things started off on a strong note but got kinda weird long before we even hit the middle. I’m talking mostly about the number of POVs and the way the events were spread between them. On one hand, the decision to tell this story this way definitely provided some absolute gems, like Valentina’s entire arc. She’s genuinely my favorite character in the book; I feel she’s changed and learned the most while hanging on the outskirts of the big unfolding tale. And I just find it so ingenious to take a character whose main role in the plot is to make the inciting incident happen and give her a voice, show how all the events affect her, let her shine. If she wasn’t a POV character, this wouldn’t have been possible. But then there are some POVs that don’t seem necessary, like the playwright. They read like some vignettes or asides the author might have written just to get to know the story better, shoved for some reason into the main body of the novel. 

And there’s also that thing that happens now and then, with the POV in random scenes switching for a bit from third person to omniscient. It’s clearly very deliberate, so I wouldn’t call it head-hopping, it’s more like zooming out to show the world around the spotlight, and in at least one case, it was pretty effective. In many other cases, though, it made things a bit confusing for me and threw me out of the scene. All of this, combined with the themes thing mentioned above, created this feeling of incompleteness, half-bakedness, not-enougness, and I kept wanting to tighten up the narrative. Not so much glaring weaknesses as a sad absence of potential strengths. 

I also didn’t expect the book to be quite so YA-ish. I thought it’d be closer to Ninth House in mood, but really, despite the darkness and the edginess and the torture scenes, big chunks of plot felt kind of juvenile. Like the almost Twilight-esque romance between Luzia and Santángel that came almost out of the blue for me. There I was really enjoying their platonic dynamic as reluctant tutor and apprentice, looking forward for it becoming even more layered and complex—and instead it got flattened to “brooding immortal with a tragic backstory is now done with tortured ennui and down bad for the spunky teenage heroine.” I don’t exactly mind this sort of thing, but it’s not quite what I expect in my adult gothic historical fantasy, you know? And big parts of the Torneo/competition also felt very tropey in a YA way. I kept getting flashbacks to Legendborn, which did the competition thing a lot better (aided by the fact that it was genuinely a YA book that wasn’t trying to be anything else). 

The prose was the one thing I absolutely, unequivocally enjoyed, perhaps even more so than Valentina’s storyline. I kind of regret picking up the audiobook instead of reading with my eyeballs, because I usually get to enjoy the prose more that way. But even on audio, it was a genuine delight and a study in how a clever turn of phrase can make even a bland moment feel special. I also liked some of the twists late in the book, how they were set up based on what initially felt like throwaway details, particularly the ending. I wasn’t the biggest fan of *what* happened, but *how* it all came together was beautifully, beautifully crafted.

Well! This installment is absolutely packed—maybe even a little too packed, I’d say, or maybe it’s that I had a bit of a problem with how all the plot threads tangled together. Each of them is super exciting in its own right, don’t get me wrong! On one hand, we’ve got yet another cold case, and the investigation has Rain doing one-on-one interviews with a convicted serial killers who just might be one of the creepiest examples of the type I’ve seen in fiction. On the other hand, there’s also a ghost haunting him and occasionally convinced that Rain is in fact the ghost’s former lover. the two storylines take their time to properly coalesce—too much time, if you ask me—but they both provide plenty of tension, intrigue, and suspense throughout the book.

And then of course there’s the ongoing romance (this series follows a single couple), and ouch, that one hurt. I mean, it hurt in good ways, and the

proposal

scene at the end was so sweet and made me absolutely giddy! But before that, I got to be frustrated so many times by this whole… idk, discrepancy? These guys are on completely different stages of the same relationship, and at this point I’m not sure if I trust them to get better at being on the same page (or at least finding the same page, or maybe the same chapter even) by next book. Maybe they’re just having a moment.

It made enough sense to me that Rain was still keeping secrets from Danny, and that he still kind of wanted to keep an escape route open in case things didn’t work out, and that he missed certain aspects of the FBI lifestyle. I expected these things to keep getting tackled in the series, but somehow, the specific way they were handled came as an unpleasant surprise. It’s like he didn’t really internalizes the lessons I thought he learned in the previous book. I expected him to be actually committing to making the relationship work but stumbling a lot. Instead, all the heavy load was on Danny, and Rain spent most of the book actively ignoring the fact that he’s hanging there half-ready to bolt. Things did get better over the course of the story, but… yeah, I’m remaining wary for now. 

The banter and the sarcastic remarks in Rain’s inner monologues remain one of the absolute highlights of the series for me. I found myself laughing under my breath all too often, even during scenes that were overall tense, scary, or even sad. And I also loved how the scenes with each of the guy’s parents were done. There are no on-the-nose comparisons, but plenty of fodder for drawing conclusions and understanding their backgrounds better. 

In terms of weaknesses, in addition to the already mentioned lack of balance between storylines, I don’t think the epilogue was necessary at all, and if it was, then its very last part would benefit from some editing. Because I’m not even sure what the author was going for there. A cliffhanger? A quick look at the next book’s summary and first page indicates that it’s not written with a previous cliffhanger in mind. Throwing in a bit of ambiguity just to shake things up, but we all understand what actually happens, wink wink nudge nudge? I guess maybe this was the intention, but it just… landed flat. The author just going in the middle of the page, “Oh, yay, I’ve reached my target WC, so the book ends right here?” While I’m sure that was *not* the intention, that’s… the closest to how the result feels like, sorry.

The concept/premise of this short story is so incredibly fun. I loved this take on a “space regency” society, the way Kit spoke about space exploration, and all the fun implications the empire’s semi-recent history offered. Unfortunately, it’s one of those stories that clearly need more space to shine. Or perhaps it’s how it was written, with the set-up taking up more than half of the page count. For a story billed as romance, the leads meet too late and their interactions end up incredibly rushed, to the point that it makes very little sense. Which is a pity, because what can be seen of their personalities—Kit’s especially, since she’s the one we get to spend more time with—is pretty compelling. Even with the constraints, there’s some nice, sparkly dialogue and the beginnings of chemistry taking root, and I’d love to see more of this relationship, just like I’d love to see more of this world. 

Like, honestly, there’s lots of goodness here! Except it reads like a first chapter of a long-form work with a quick extra scene tacked on.

Technically, this is the third installment in the Breakaway series, but the main characters change here and the connections to the first two books are honestly minimal, so this felt more like a standalone. On one hand, that was a bit of a disappointment because I love Alex and Eli from books 1-2 so, so much and I would have loved to see them and Alex’s teammates again rather than just get a vague mention. On the other hand, the absence of my old faves let me focus on Rome and Damien more, and now I have new faves, because damn, these two broken boys absolutely ruined me. I smiled, I felt teary-eyed, I was mad and frustrated, I got cozy and content—this book was an emotional ride, start to finish, in all the absolute best ways. 

My favorite part was almost definitely Rome’s entire journey toward learning to let people in. The first time he asked others for help I literally cheered out loud, because the author conveyed so well just how hard it was for him to do it. His initial abrasiveness was described with such raw compassion, it was obvious that he was hurting inside and unequipped for dealing with kindness. When you’ve gone without for long enough, kindness *hurts*, so it was so understandable why he tried to protect himself from the pain. But as understandable as it was, I absolutely ached for Damien whose best intentions kept getting rejected—and I was so happy when they started to gradually, realistically, bit by bit find mutual understanding. And that understanding morphing into feelings? Chef’s kiss.

Then again, maybe my favorite part is Damien’s relationship with poetry and words and how he was constantly trying to process his feelings through his art. Or maybe it’s the way the book does away with toxic masculinity and initiates some great discussion about the intersections of marginalizations and privileges. Or maybe it’s the awesome found family vibe and how the group dynamic unfolds around the central relationship. Or the parts where they visit each other’s homes, and how the descriptions of those places subtly add to the characterization. Or every part where listening to music was involved, especially since the characters’ playlist have so much in common with mine.

Gah. So many strengths, so many favorite parts. But to bring up some weaknesses, too—there was definitely too little sports in this sports romance. Like… I never doubted Damien’s poetry was super important to him and wasn’t surprised to see him lean toward it over hockey. And I got the feeling that Rome’s relationship with hockey, in turn, was supposed to be kind of like that, too: his thing, something that helps him process, gives him meaning. There were absolutely attempts to present it that way, but in the end, they fell a bit flat. Maybe hockey’s just a thing Rome’s been doing because that’s the one good, fun thing he’s encountered so far, he doesn’t realize he’s got choices (and realistically speaking, being dirt-poor, doesn’t have *immediate* choices), it’s his ticket to a better life in the future because he’s talented, etc. Maybe he’d prefer to be doing something else and just doesn’t know it.

I’ve been thinking about why I perceive it that way, because there definitely were attempts to both show and tell that Rome loves hockey, and I think the problem is that there are no key scenes that involve it, the kind that would strongly drive the plot/relationship/personal arcs forward. There are such scenes that involve Damien and poetry, but all the hockey just happens very much in the background. All the important beats are hit outside of it. The whole gang could have been playing basketball or baseball instead, or just been gifted kids in a special program, or whatever. Hockey doesn’t hold that much meaning within the plot, so I find it hard to buy that it holds so much meaning for the character. 

There’s another thing that didn’t sit well with me, though it’s less a weakness and more a matter of preference: the whole Finley subplot in the second half. It made me a bit uncomfortable. Unlike the first two books that are firmly NA, this one is YA, with characters being teens not yet out of high school, and the idea that they would suddenly

decide they want to be parents ASAP when they had trouble talking about holding hands just weeks ago… Idk, it made pretty little sense. Like, yeah, I get why Rome felt so attached to his newborn sister, and it made perfect sense for him to want to be a part of her life. But wanting to adopt her, when he’s freshly emancipated, hasn’t had a real childhood, has had super limited life experiences due to growing up poor in an abusive situation, and all in all, when he’s just a kid dealing with plenty? That didn’t feel like a healthy decision, and it didn’t feel healthy on Damien’s part to get so attached to the idea, either. Both of them struggle with different types of abandonment issues, and I feel like they just projected those issues on Finley and the adults around them should have been more concerned rather than going all “Awwwww.” Yes, there was some discussion around this choice and the logistics of it and how to best make it work, but it didn’t convince me that it was a reasonable choice in the first place. I think both guys should have first figured out their individual lives and their relationship and whether each of them is truly “the one” to the other. Because I ship them a lot, but also, they’re seventeen/eighteen. Everything can feel so all-encompassing and forever in that age; not everything is.

Normally, I can split TJ Klune’s works into two distinct categories: books that feel like they were made for me and books that make me cringe so hard I can’t finish them. This one is a curious beast that doesn’t fully fit either shelf. It does lean strongly toward the “made for me,” and it only made me cringe in that weird special secondhand embarrassment way once, but there are some aspects of it that leave me uncomfortable.

Technically, this is a paranormal romance, but with the deep dive into the main character’s head and life story and the way it starts with Ox being in about his mid-teens and follows him from a lonely, bullied kid to a position of local power with a strong support network, it reads kind of like a bildungsroman. I really enjoyed hanging out with Ox through all of his trials and tribulations, seeing him grow into his potential, watching other characters appreciate him. Despite the hardships he’s had to face, overall this journey felt healing, heartwarming, and life-affirming.

For the most part, I really enjoyed the writing. It was poignant, immersive, and I liked how all sorts of small descriptions of the characters’ surroundings were woven into their interactions. All those little touches that grounded the story in specific locations and breathed life into those places. At the same time, there were definitely parts that got incredibly repetitive. I recognize why those persistent memories/motives were important for Ox, but I think there were other ways to include them without just saying the same thing over and over every couple of chapters. For example, instead of having him recall his mother popping a soap bubble on his ear, he could have seen a soap bubble in real time and had some kind of feeling, or got soap in his ear, etc. Those would still send the reader’s mind back to the original soap bubble scene, if timed appropriately. And that’s just one example, there are many more I can think of.

What really didn’t sit well for me, until way into the second half of the book, was the romance. The characters meet when Ox is 16 and Joe is 10, and Joe immediately feels the pressing need to latch onto Ox with all his energy. For the longest time, there’s nothing there but friendship, and Ox also becomes friends with Joe’s older brothers who are closer to him in age. But then at some point, when Ox is 23 and Joe is 17, the transition to romance starts, and while it was slow and nothing sexual happened at that time, it just made me uncomfortable. Like, come on, how do you just stop seeing Joe as a kid in this situation? Especially since he is still a kid! A six-year gap is often nothing between adults, but the younger people are, the more even a couple of years matters, and in this case, Joe has been growing up in front of Ox and Ox has practically become a family member. It was just. Really weird. In the second half of the book, when they started reconnecting after Joe’s been away for a while for plot reasons, that sense of weirdness was pretty much absent though, unless I focused on the fact that they had already attempted a relationship before Joe’s departure. I think if there was no such attempt and the romance only begun when they reconnected, I would have enjoyed the story way more. Because that period of absence gave them both a chance to grow individually and amass their own life experiences, making them into slightly different people and creating a distance between the kids they were and the adults they become.

My favorite aspect of the book is undeniably the found family Ox builds as he goes, starting with Gordo’s shop so early on and ending up with his own big pack. I loved how pretty much every character in this big network had depth, and all the individual connections and relationships were so unique. I also appreciated how the presence of all these people/wolves/witches in Ox’s life didn’t fully erase the scars from his father’s abandoning him. That was something that still had happened, and left its mark, but he ended up having, or rather building, something new, something important, something future-shaped. There’s actually a lot of scar-related symbolism in the book that focuses on the weight of our past experiences, even the painful once, and how healing from them doesn’t mean rendering them insignificant, and this is something that resonates with me a lot. I’m very here for it.

I don’t want to get lost in the past. I want to embrace it and understand it.

Wow! This book is a lot—mostly in a very good way. In many ways, it felt like a whole season of a tv-show. The pre-Netflix days kind, the type with ~24 episodes that can afford to start a little slow, to include entire complete plot arcs inside its structure, to pivot now and then in new directions, and to end on a mouthwatering cliffhanger. The worldbuilding here has LOTS of moving parts, with the same aspects of the worlds meaning different things to different factions. Bree, the main character, is on about three intersecting journeys at once: working through her grief after her mother’s death, digging for the truth about her family’s past, and dealing with the whole “descendants of the Round Table knights are a modern-day secret society fighting demons” plot. With a single book being so packed, there was a bunch of stuff that kind of fell by the wayside / begged to be cleaned up a bit, but overall, I really enjoyed the experience. Not in small part because Bree is just such a likable character and her inner struggles are so well-written.

For something so big and expansive, the book is plotted really well, with the various storylines overall balanced against each other. The twists are set up subtly ahead of time and make sense while also being surprising. For a 500-pages book, this never felt overwritten or bloated. All the storylines and events were absolutely necessary for the bigger picture, and there’s clearly a lot of groundwork done for whatever’s to come in the next books (which I’m definitely picking up!). I loved how some of the events, both in Bree’s past and present, got recontextualized over the course of the story as more and more information was revealed. Even some layers in this plot have layers, and I’m really here for this.

I also very much enjoyed the prose and the character’s voice. There’s something incredibly endearing about it, and I felt like the writing nicely straddled the line between “to the point” and “pretty,” if that makes sense? On the whole, this is a plot-first story and the prose doesn’t distract from the events and conveys them effectively and smoothly. But there are also, nearly in every chapter, some nice, heartstring-tugging quotable lines, some small, memorable turns of phrase. Also, the banter is pretty great, especially whenever Sel enters the chat.

Another thing I appreciated a lot was how the questions of race were handled. I’m a white person who grew up in an overwhelmingly white environment, so it’s not my place to speak of how realistic, relatable etc this depiction actually is. But Bree’s experiences being the only person of color in environments designed for white people resonated with me and reminded me of the experience of being the only trans or the only neurodivergent person in a room. I found the way the worst aspects of the historical past were brought up and acknowledged and woven into the plot to be pretty thoughtful, and the book constantly made me think about all the ways we as humans could do better by each other, but like… not in a preachy way. More in a, “so these are the events that I know would have happened totally differently if they happened to someone not systematically discriminated against, now it’s my choice whether to dwell on it or not.”

Moving on from the gushing to the not so good parts, with such a focus on plot what sadly suffered was the character work. I’ve spotted a good number of situations where characters were so blatantly used as plot devices, like, ouch. There were no smoke and mirrors used to cover up the fact that they moved into specific positions or did specific things because that was necessary for the next plot point to happen (as opposed to creating the feeling that the next plot point only happened because certain characters, driven by their goals, conflicts, and motivations, made certain choices; the distinction might be subtle at times, but it’s there). The biggest example is Alice, Bree’s  supposed best friend. She just really only exists for the plot. She pops in and out of the story depending on whether her involvement can move Bree’s arc forward. She only ever does and says things that nudge Bree into the correct plot position. We know next to nothing about her own life, struggles, interests, opinions, anything—because she and Bree never talk about anything that isn’t about Bree’s current predicaments. Like come onnnn, at least try to make me believe there’s a fictional person behind the name! Sadness. At least other characters utilized in this manner get some moments of depths and humanity, too.

The richness of the setting also has a downside in how it’s all delivered. With the timeline being pretty tight (more on that in a minute) and Bree being a complete newcomer to the world of the supernatural and having to get immersed into not just one but two ways of perceiving this new world, it’s understandable that the options for conveying all the information were limited. But seriously, the first 1/3 of the book or so is just so full of lectures and explanations and telling, telling, telling that it got kind of tiresome. And speaking of the timeline, I felt like the book was generally well-paced until I looked back, did some math, and realized that the whole avalanche of events took place over like a few weeks at most. Like, damn! All this stuff could be safely spread over an entire school term, giving characters and relationships more room to breathe, and providing more opportunities for organically introducing worldbuilding details.

And for something that I’m not sure is an actual weakness as it’s a “not for me” thing: ugh, the love triangle. I sometimes enjoy them, when the choice between love interests also represents a choice between morals, lifestyles, goals, etc, but I didn’t feel this was at all the case here. And Bree’s romance with Nick, especially given the timeline, was just was rushed, insta-love-y, and plot-device-y, it did nothing for me and actually stood in the way of enjoying certain parts of the book. (Though it’s interesting that very late in the  story, amidst the final twists, the narrative sort of acknowledges this and provides in-universe explanation!) With Sel at least there’s a logical, emotionally charged progression from animosity to teamwork, plus he got all the best dialogue lines. So I guess that puts me on his team. but really, I felt that while this type of romantic subplot is a staple of the genre, it wasn’t super necessary for this specific story. I would have much preferred some of the page count that went into romance to be spent on having Bree clash and connect with other members of the amazingly diverse cast in a variety of ways.