TOTO, WE’RE NOT IN YA FANTASY ANYMORE.

Can you believe that of all the eras we could have been born in, we are all blessed to live in the one in which Leigh Bardugo is publishing books?!

I have often felt like Leigh is able to sneak into my brain and write exactly what I need. (I am calling her by her first name because if she is, in fact, a presence inside my mind then it’s a given that we’d be on that level of familiarity.)

For example: I love heists and ragtag groups of friends and slow burn romance and did I mention I love heists.

Boom. Six of Crows.

I love fairytales and beautiful illustrations and even beautiful-er writing.

Boom. Language of Thorns.

And I love fantasy stories and darkness and twists and magic and New England, but I’ve been feeling dismal about young adult books lately, like maybe I’ve grown out of them.

Boom. This book.

I am one happy camper.

This took me a whileeee to get into. I’m talking 100 to 200 pages, even. But once I was in, I WAS IN. I could not put it down and also I wanted to climb inside the pages and live there and give Alex a kiss on the face and also do her homework for her because oh my god she was not doing it and it stressed me out.

This rivals the later Harry Potter books for repeated mentions of homework that the main characters simply are not doing.

I love Alex and her thorniness and her fierceness. I love Dawes and her loyalty and her secret goofiness and her sweaters. I love Yale and its secrets and its grounds and its impenetrability.

I love Darlington because obviously.

Spoiler

I had a feeling Bardugo didn’t REALLY kill Darlington...he’s just too good of a character. I knew she would’ve had an affection for him. I guess you don’t kill your darling(ton)s after all…and yes, it’s official, I am the funniest person alive.

I even love teeny-tiny characters who shouldn’t have enough characterization but in fact do and are fantastic (Lauren, Mercy, even Tripp and Hellie and people with like single lines of dialogue).

God damn it I need the next book NOW. Leigh, if I didn’t have all the respect in the world for you, I would scream because you are writing 82 books and 300 TV and film adaptations and I just want you to let me back into this world right now, please and thank you.

Honestly...I am profoundly impressed by the fact that this book felt N O T H I N G like anything else I’ve read by Leigh Bardugo. She is just such a good writer.

Also, speaking of the fact that this is very un-Bardugo.

This IS NOT a young adult book. In young adult books, things can be relatively happy-happy-joy-joy. General fiction has no such obligation.

There is a lot of violence and gore and intense imagery in this story. It is not a comfy read. You can say that this is not your cup of tea for those reasons, and you are well within your rights to say so.

But it’s not fair to say this is a *bad book* because it has those things.

There is not a cap on the upsetting content that a story can contain before it’s gone overboard. A book is not bad because it dares to address multiple difficult topics.

This is a book where awful and disturbing things happen, yes, but it isn’t a book where awful and disturbing things happen for no reason. They don’t happen in a vacuum without cause or results. The characters are affected by them.

It handles multiple tough topics with care and with sensitivity. It is a well written and well handled book. Trying to “cancel” it because it does so is equivalent to banning books.

Anyway. Censorship rant over.

Back to the important stuff.

GIVE ME THE SEQUEL.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO INVESTED IN THE PLOTLINE OF A BOOK THAT HASN’T COME OUT YET.

I WEEP.

Bottom line: Leigh Bardugo help me.

Also I need to change this to five stars.

---------------------
reread updates

GIVE ME THE SEQUEL NOW

buddy reread with lily because my life is perfect

-----------
currently-rereading updates

my internal monologue: darlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlingtondarlington

-----------

the only surprising thing about me rereading this is that it took this long

-----------
pre-review

QUEEN LEIGH HAS DONE IT AGAIN.

review to come / 4.5 stars might change to 5 WHO KNOWS

-----------
currently reading updates

(don't mind me, just arbitrarily decided in the middle of the day six months after i last read this that it deserves five stars.)

-----------

IT'S HAPPENING.

-----------
tbr review

going to need my copy of this to hurry up and GET HERE thx

-----------

to give you an idea of how much i'm anticipating this:

i've only preordered 2 books in my life.

this is one of them.