I liked this book, at first. The world was interesting. The writing was just so Y/A and corny, which would be fine if this were marketed as Y/A (which I really believe it should be.) Very heavy handed explanations about the morality of every situation, the way you would do with a younger reader. Seeing it compared to The Secret History is genuinely baffling to me. I guess in relating it to that, they were just going off of the dark academia, study by candlelight “vibes.” It’s much closer in tone and substance to Harry Potter. There’s definitely an innocence to this book and all of its characters that doesn’t translate well to an adult audience, especially since the particulars of certain situations the characters are in are complicated and dark and yet, they seem to be solved by “friendship.” I’d definitely recommend this to readers who are in middle school and maybe not yet aware of the mechanics of colonialism and all of the damage it’s done. The magical elements provided some tidy metaphors and weren’t overwrought.