'𝑴𝒚 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒎𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝜤 𝒂𝒎 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒂𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒅'

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I am so frustrated with this book. It has taken me so long to get through it, and I switched to audio for the last third which helped.

All the individual elements of this story absolutely banged. I loved Bryce. I loved Hunt. The supporting cast were great. I was really into the mixing of all the lore.- witches, Fae, shifters, sprites, vampires and rubbing along together was fun. The politics was interesting.The setting? *loved*. It gave me Gotham vibes. That kind of dirty, gritty urban locale, moody and grungy. I could see it as a wicked TV series. The plot was (eventually) interesting and twisty and all the good stuff.

But overall, for reasons I cannot totally pinpoint, those individual components went together to create a real struggle for me.

I can definitely say that some of the dialogue is CRINGE as hell. These cool, edgy people aren't as cool and edgy as SJM thinks they are. Like it's a bit try hard. It did not need to be 800 pages long, it needed some more editing. I don't feel like there needed to be quite so many false turns. I also think there were about 3 separate and appropriate end points to this and when I was listening couldn't quite comprehend how there was still half an hour left. 

I will move onto the second one at some point, but I'm not hopeful.