I actually found that I liked the way the POVs were used, how the author sometimes jumped back and forth between them in short bursts (but always kept them clearly separated), because it had a unique kind of effect and added a feel of immediacy the book.Īlso, I can’t say I’m a fan of the cover design on the original hardcover, but the little silhouette etching on the actual hardcover is so simple yet so beautiful and is my favorite of all the hardcover books I own. I also thought there were maybe a few too many POVs, some of which we’re very brief and didn’t quite seem necessary, but that was a very minor problem. I did feel like the ending seemed maybe a bit rushed and unexpected, but again, that could just be me because of how I read this book. My understanding of the pacing was a bit off because I had to kind of read this book in pieces over the course of a few weeks due to health problems, but I didn’t mind the slowness of the beginning has everything was being set up. This did have a lot of similarities to Harry Potter (a magic school, an orphaned chosen one, a Drarry-esque relationship), but this was definitely its own story with its own unique characters, and aside from those basic ideas, it was very different.
It used words for spells-nursery rhymes, song lyrics, and other well-known phrases-because words have power. I also thought The magic system was really cool. This is going to sound weird, but I even liked the lack of romanticism in their relationship and the way that they saw and described each other because it made everything more grounded and realistic which somehow made it even cuter. Well, Simon didn’t technically have secret feelings… that he knew of… but he was oddly obsessed with Baz, and the author did a great job of making you feel that there was something there, something more than just Simon worrying that Baz was plotting against him, so that when the romance did happen, it wasn’t completely out of nowhere. I loved the roommates/enemies-with-secret-feelings dynamic between them. I loved Baz with his dark mysteriousness and his fatalistic loneliness. I loved Simon with his quirky awkwardness and his weird love of butter. Always working themselves up into snits and strops and blusters.