DNF at 20%.

As a lover of quirky little detective plots and messy protagonists, I was expecting to/hoping to like this!

I was really slogging through the first few chapters and found myself eager to just get to the end of one chapter in hopes that it would be more engaging in the next. This book bounces between several different POVs, which is normally fine by me as long as we learn something about the characters. This was not the case, and instead the first four chapters were quite boring (we did not need almost 2 pages just describing someone waking up and going to work). We also didn't learn enough about any of the characters for them to have redeeming qualities to hold against otherwise flat personalities.

While the plot did eventually start to unfold at chapter 5, I just couldn't get over how unrealistic some of the characters' choices felt. Nicole is supposed to be this whip-smart lawyer and we're supposed to believe her "lawyer advice" is to destroy potential evidence of a crime? It just feels like there's messy protagonists, and then there's whatever these people are.

I don't actually need to like the MC(s) for a book to be enjoyable; some of my favorite reads have been ones where I didn't like a single character! But at least in those cases, there's enough information about them as a character to make the decision not to like them. These characters, unfortunately, aren't developed and believable enough to be likeable or unlikable.

Ironically, it was a scene within this book that made me decide to DNF, despite only having DNF'd one other book. One of the character talks about hating a book, but being a completionist and they say something to the effect of "I hated it, and I know I hated it because I read the whole thing" and this opened my eyes to the fact that I do this, too, and sometimes you really don't need to trouble yourself with reading books you don't like.

A very magical book indeed. This style of writing takes a couple of chapters to get used to if, like me, you haven't read many classics and have gotten used to a more contemporary style of writing. That said, the imagery and story are so beautifully written that it feels like you're there in the secret garden yourself. Through a modern lens, the racist and ableist ways of speaking can certainly take you aback, though. I imagine it might especially be a difficult read for South Asian folks.