even though i finished this book yesterday, i had to wait a little and gather my thoughts to write anything coherent. first of all, i loved the depiction of sibling bond in this book, it was sweet and angry, and full of laughter and guilt, and as i have siblings too i found it to be very believable (if i read it as a teenager, i'd probably be even more obsessed with it haha). i liked that i could see that main characters are two different kids, and still clearly notice their similarities as twins, their behaviour, how well they knew each other. i liked the whole premise and the characters too, BUT! i feel like this book makes you pick a side very early in. either you feel more connected to jude or noah. and if you're more like noah the narration makes total sense, it helps you get more into jude's head while you already know what's going on in noah's head because you know him. if you're more like jude (as i found myself to be), i wished there would be 16yo noah pov. i wanted so badly to understand him, to get why he acts like that and i only got a part where his annoying, impulsive child. i only got to know his grown-up inner world right by the and and i think the creation of his character suffered because of that. that being said, this book is still very human, i felt seen while reading it, much more than i'd like to admit. it's very good coming of age story about a family working their way through grief and i really admire that while it doesn't avoif difficult subjects, they're still done in a very tasteful, subtle way. plus i really liked the OCD rep, it was really well done! p.s. can i just hug jude and tell her it's going to be okay p.p.s. mr. sweetwine my dms are open for you

i wish my boy percy had like 5 seconds to finally fucking relax

first things first: this book has a wonderful atmosphere, with likeable fmc, i could feel the snow and the cold of that wilderness and the magic of russian folklore

but! i felt like this book had a weird pace - the beginning dragged on for 250 pages and then the end was really quick and i could feel the imbalance, it was... weird.

additionally sometimes i felt like the author tried to make russian words and customs more "wild" and "exotic" (she even admitted that in the acknowledgements) which was... a choice? it felt like that weird fascination with "orientalism" from a colonial point of view, and maybe I'm reading to much into this, but... i don't know. I'll look out for it in the second book.

i will read the sequel, because I'm pretty interested in this story, and I'll see whether things that bother me will change. but it's a really perfect book for winter!!! ❄️