I remember really enjoying the first book, but unfortunately, reading this second installment felt like a chore for about half of the time, which I really wasn’t expecting. I still loved the gorgeous world with its dragons and gods, but somehow this book felt like it was trying to do too much and lost itself along the way.

I appreciate expanding the world through new POVs, but why do they all have to be introduced at once, to the point where the book starts with several different POVs before we even get back to the original protagonist? Not to mention the lyricism, which is beautiful in itself but has been turned up to turbo mode here. This wasn’t helped by the fact that barely anything new happens to the main couple during the first 70% of the book, while the reader is instead dragged through dozens of time jumps and new POVs. The relationship between the main couple also became painfully repetitive, even though I still appreciate the exceptionally mature, and perhaps slightly too perfect, MMC.

The ending and its twists improved the book somewhat, although I did have to keep reminding myself how exactly they were relevant based on the first book. I also absolutely loved the gorgeous illustrations in my edition.

Overall, though, this left me feeling a little disappointed, probably partly because my expectations were quite high.

4.25. This hit me so much harder than I expected from a 200-page book. The depiction of four 12-year-old girls spending the summer in a condemned neighborhood in Chicago felt so authentic that I completely understand why this is often compared to a memoir. What I really don’t understand is how this debut manages to create such multidimensional characters, tell a tragic story, and include excellent political commentary in such a short space. It even reminded me of Demon Copperhead, which has four times as many pages to accomplish much of the same.

At the same time, the ending, where we jump forward to the characters as adults, felt so disconnected and different in tone that I honestly would have preferred to skip it altogether. The author’s somewhat heavy-handed focus on religion also felt like a bit much at times, although it did fit the world of the book.

Even with those issues, though, this was an excellent reading experience that left me thinking about some of life’s bigger questions.

I’m now glad I stuck with the first book, because this one really takes its best elements and improves on them tremendously. The large cast, which felt overwhelming to me at first, really comes into its own here. Every character is so flawed and complex that I genuinely can’t remember the last time I read something with a cast like this. I don’t particularly like any of them, yet the book still manages to keep me completely hooked from the very beginning. Not to mention the relationship between the two protagonists, which is somehow both incredibly frustrating and endlessly fascinating.

The biggest reason I enjoyed this, though, was how deeply it explores its central themes, particularly class and gender. The slow pacing that bored me in the first book turned out to be perfect here for delivering sharply formulated observations that you actually have time to stop and think about. The book also grows from observations about childhood into very realistic challenges of adolescence, which made everything feel so authentic that I genuinely felt like I was there.

There were still a few moments where I wanted to get deeper into Elena’s personality and the things that happen to her, although I understand that at this point the whole point is that she builds her identity so strongly around other people. Still, I was missing that final emotional punch that would have pushed this all the way to five stars.

This reminded me a lot of the Neapolitan series, which I was reading at the same time, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite reach the same level, even though it did manage to bring a tear to my eye at the end and tie the story together nicely.

I really liked the relationship between the two girls/women at the heart of the story and how the events of Iranian history were woven into their lives. At the same time, I wish the protagonist had been a more multidimensional character. The first half of the book felt like it mostly revolved around teenage drama, while the protagonist simply shrugged off all the politically significant events around her, which felt like they deserved much more reflection. I also wasn’t a fan of the ending’s rather heavy-handed “America is great” sentiment, especially when the book could have instead drawn more meaningful connections between what was happening in Iran and the political events unfolding in the US today.

The book did get better towards the end, though, and I still felt like I learned something new from what was ultimately a reasonably entertaining read.