and what if i said that i REALLY enjoyed this?

look is this a perfect book? not by any stretch of the imagination. there are some baffling turns of phrase, and i wish it were longer so that we could get some more insight into character like kían and sarait and especially niamh. in fact i am BEGGING for a niamh sequel. but this is so engrossing and fun and there are real actual stakes involved (although it could have gone further). and even though i know legally blonde like the back of my hand, i was still totally absorbed into this book. i did not want to put it down and finished it in just over 24 hours. i love clia and ronan, and their relationship is so sweet. clia was autism spectrum coded for sure which i always love, and ronan had chronic pain and it wasn’t treated with disdain which i really appreciate.

reading this like lit a fire in me, i need to pick up another book asap. and just for that, it deserves all the praise.

the cutest thing you ever did read. i adored this! it is genuinely just so cute and sweet. i love a morally grey love interest who would kill for their person, and i love a sweet nerdy guy who would never hurt a fly. they are the perfect combination, and kingfisher ties in the characters from swordheart so nicely.

an excellent concept that wasn’t as well executed as i wanted it to be. honestly if i weren’t reading this for book club i might have dnfed. i literally NEVER say this, but i think i would have liked this better from the perspective of the male side character. daniel was so interesting and funny and i think would have had a more complete and complex view of the world. i found ellie to be often frustrating. and chris was so evil as to be a nearly comical villain. it was hard to see her as a person and not a caricature. it’s like the characterization was ALMOST there and then the author would always take it just a step too far. like chris being a gaslighting manipulator? believable. chris trying to kill ellie twice a week? okay at what point do you just say the sisterly bond is a lost cause entirely? ahdi was also WAY too much of a godlike character. like why didn’t he just handle everything if he was so gifted? i wanted to like this so much more than i did, and there were still a lot of enjoyable parts (the food and music descriptors/analogies and daniel), but overall this was underwhelming.

i really liked this world, and i wish the book had been longer. i was so invested in this story and the characters, and the world was so fascinating. all the lore about witches and the tie ins to immigration were chefs kiss. unfortunately the book is so short and there is so much telling rather than showing that as a whole, this falls flat for me despite a spectacular concept. there are so many deep themes in this book, and they needed a little more time to be fully explored.

on the plus side, this did get me out of a bit of a slump because i was so invested in the world and finding out what was going on.

this is SO CUTE! marisol and jamila are so sweet and lovely, and i love the way they interact and how mature they were overall despite still feeling like they are teenagers. all the main characters including miles made such understandable choices. i like that they didn’t make miles hateful, just a guy who made a mistake with his first relationship and breakup ever. the family dynamics are so good. mari was so welcomed by her father’s side of the family. kevin is maybe my favorite character. he is so funny and sweet and cool. and jamila’s family also similarly feels so real and relatable. i love the sibling dynamic and the interaction with her mom. my only complaints are that i wish the book were longer and that the ending of the book had been more fleshed out. overall this is so cute and fun and light and was exactly what i wanted to read.

this is the most evil book i’ve ever read. i struggled a little at first with the pacing and feeling frustrated with the characters. then i spent two full hours crying and the last 20 minutes of that sobbing so hard i was hiccuping. i’ve truly never read anything like this.

i love emily henry, and this isn’t my LEAST favorite of her books, but it’s definitely not my favorite. like with happy place, i find myself far more compelled not by the main relationships but by the most prominent platonic relationships in the FMC’s life. in this one, i was really moved by margaret’s relationship with laura and by alice’s relationship with her mom.

i didn’t particularly love either of the romantic relationships, perhaps because margaret/cosmo and alice/hayden relationships were so clearly mirrors of each other, and they both featured people falling in love kind of just on vibes without really KNOWING each other. on a personal level, im also just not really someone who vibes with relationships that are based primarily on attraction, which it felt like alice’s relationship with hayden was.

i will admit that i still found this extremely fun and easy to read, and i did tear up at the end when alice was with her mom and when hayden showed up with her letter. and im absolutely weak for the idea of unmaking and remaking the world for the person you love. even if the romantic relationships weren’t my fav, i still love the way emily henry describes love.