Will I ever stop thinking books are going to be light, fun reads and ending up getting clotheslined by them when they turn out to be a lot darker? The answer is... I doubt it. But that's fine, because it does truly add to the experience.

This is classified as MG but I would put it somewhere between upper MG/lower YA because even though the characters are 14ish, the way it's written and how the themes are explored are more YA-leaning.

Okay so now onto the book itself. This is one of those reads that seem really really good while I'm reading, but afterwards I look back and think "yeah that was good but not spectacular." There's no specific reason for that; I liked Simon (omg 490 pages in that ebook and he did not catch 1 single break), the plot was very high-stakes, and the dark atmosphere/the world itself were honestly incredible. I just... I don't know. I didn't connect with the book as a whole, and that's okay. It was still a fun read.

I do want to point out the writing itself. This book dealt with a lot of ideas and feelings that would ordinarily be super hard to describe (mostly because they don't exist and are different than just describing the setting or rules of a fantasy world), but the author did a really great job of it.

Final note is that I did cry over a specific part of this at 5 am so I will be counting that as another achievement for this book