Even if I didn’t love the ending, I relished every step of the journey. Full of gothic horror, girl power, and witchy New England autumn dark academic vibes…yeah, this was right up my alley. Each page was as delicious and juicy and complicated as a Black Oxford apple. (You gotta read the book to know what I mean here, dear Reader.) I sometimes get lost in the “story within a story within a story” frame, but Danforth pulled it off quite well. The Hollywood magic horror movie element was done so brilliantly. It felt like an homage to classic slasher films, but on the  page rather than on film. I was really fascinated by how cinematic Danforth managed to make her prose. She was able to capture that heart pumping, edge of your seat, dark sense of foreboding feeling that you get when you watch a potential victim creep around the set on screen, even though the pace of a novel is undeniably slower. Remarkable, really. But it still wasn’t unnecessarily creepy and never gory, which I appreciated. Especially with this being my bedtime book. I’ve never read anything quite like this before, which is always a high compliment in my world! Definitely get this in print or ebook, so you don’t miss out on the illustrations.