This is such an odd little creature of a book. It's a book I shouldn't like, by any metric: it's a spin-off of a YA series I read once and don't really remember, it's set in LA and therefore obsessed with celebrity culture and addiction, and there's only a little tiny bit of fantasy to keep continuity with the series it comes from. But as always, Stiefvater's primary concern is the emotional truth in these characters and their story, and as always she's knocking it out of the park. In almost any other hands, both Cole and Isabel would annoy the hell out of me, both as characters and as a couple, but the love with which they are rendered here is frankly astounding. A surprising hard-hitter in Stiefvater's canon.