Absolutely divine. For some reason, I had it in my head that there was a magical cat in this story and I had no interest in reading about any cats, magical or otherwise, so I never picked it up when it was initially on my radar. Thank goodness it was a book club pick because I was missing out on something truly wonderful. And in case you're wondering, no, there's not a magical cat.

I don't want to say too much about the story because I think it's good to go in blind, or as much as possible. All I'll say is that I felt like every single character in this book was someone that surely must have been a living breathing person at some point in time. They were every one, the good and the bad, such well presented characters that I nearly immediately felt as if I knew them. I hated the bad ones and I loved the good ones. I felt their joy and their sadness in these pages and I was crushed to leave them at the end. My favorite was Six-Thirty and if he's not your favorite too, can we even be friends??

I do have two critiques that knocked this off the five star tier. First, it was a bit too overtly atheist. I'm fine with a book showing its viewpoint on religion but not if it feels like I'm getting hit over the head with it. This was almost there. Maybe a bump on the shoulder, if not over the head, and it was too heavy-handed. Second was the head hopping. I'm not sure I've encountered this before, and certainly not to this extent, but it was jarring to the point of pulling me out of the story every time it happened. Sometimes I had to skip back a paragraph to reorient myself and make sure I knew who I was following. I don't know if this was a stylistic choice or an oversight but I didn't care for it.

In a different book, those could have been much bigger flaws but I was so engrossed in the lives of Elizabeth, Calvin, Mad, Six-Thirty, and the rest of the characters that I was more than willing to overlook them just to spend more time in the story. What a delightful book this is 😊