This book is one big papery wedge of queer bait, and I'm not having a good time. The marketing for it (not to mention the overwhelmingly fangirly legions of readers that worship this series for some ungodly reason) leans so heavily on Gideon and Harrow being lesbians, and I'm finding that their gayness serves absolutely no purpose to the story or the plot. It's just a ploy to pander to queer readers, and I hate that I fell for it. This is not a queer story. It's a dark fantasy/sci-fi/murder mystery set in a queernormative universe.

I'm having a hard time with this book. I think part of the problem is that the person doing all the thinking and complicated magic isn’t actually the main character, and she explains everything to Gideon as if Gideon is slow to understand, which gets frustrating after a while. Also I'm getting triggered by all the anatomy terms and the description of the first house sounds like an hospital?! Anyway, I’m at 46% now, and I still have no idea what’s really going on. Usually by this point, even when I’m just listening to an audiobook, things have clicked for me. But this time, I’m just feeling lost and frustrated.

Gosh, the way I would absolutely love to explore the Canaan House.

"If you talk like that to her again, Babs," said the golden twin, "I'll destroy you. Beg her forgiveness."

Fighting and insulting your sister but then immediately getting defensive when someone else talks badly to them is such a sibling thing to do 😭