★★★★★
Overall, I liked this book... But there were a few things that stood out to me in negative ways. I'll get onto those in a moment, first I'm doing the good stuff!
*I'm going to try not to have any spoilers here, feel free to read on whether or not you've read the book!*
I think the character portrayal was great, even the not-so-important characters had distinct personalities and ways of speaking. Not to mention the wide array of characters, each which played an important part of the story! Deep, realistic people. Even the shallow-minded ones had depth.
World-building as well, the small town setting was very well done! I could clearly visualize the setting, as well as the fact that the setting was a great fit to drive the plot forward. The amount of effort and time put into building a great world with realistic people paid off!
The plot itself was pretty good... I'll get more into that later... But I liked the mystery and suspense that came with it. The foreshadowing of certain events, which both made them more suspenseful and believable, was very well done!
Basically, the development of the characters, setting, and storyline was overall very well done.
Also, the ending wasn't totally but also was totally unexpected. I liked that part.
Now onto the things I didn't like so much... First off would be the length of the book. I feel like a lot of the middle of the book could've been trimmed, and no difference would've been made. It wasn't exactly boring, just unnecessary, and as someone who prefers books on the shorter side, I found that a little bit annoying.
Also, some of the names... I've heard a mistake that you don't want to make as a writer is naming two characters with similar names, even just names beginning with the same letter. So why, please tell me, do we have Lena, Lila, Link, and Larkin?
And another thing, just a personal preference but still something, the whole name change thing when you turn sixteen. If you're going to give me a whole novel with someone having one name, then in the middle tell me that that's not the real name and not tell me what that is, not only do I kind of want to know by the end of the book (Which I don't) but this serves no relevance to the plot aside from make the same point that a character's been making for the whole book. Also, I kind of got to know the character by this one name, and as much as I love names changing as a coming-of-age, here's-your-true-personalized-name sort of thing, I got invested in this character as X, if you start calling them Z I'm gonna become kinda detached!
The plot in general, honestly, was a little cliche... I won't get into the specifics because this is supposed to be spoiler-free, but I could spot quite a few cliche points. True, they weren't flat out cliche, the author did at least try to add originality. But I still found it to be more like a mashup of a few popular tropes with a sprinkle of concealment. Again, this was a great book, I loved it, but I also wasn't motivated to go find book 2 at the library.
Also... If this upcoming event is unavoidable and your whole inner conflict is based around not having a choice in this, why are you guys spending days on end trying to research how to stop it? If you can't stop it??
Overall, I liked this book, but there was room for improvement. As there always is. I still enjoyed it, I just wish that some of the names and plot-points were given the same attention as the character building and setting!
★ Development (Characters, setting, etc.)
★ Foreshadowing/Plotline details
★ Totally Believable (Barring magic, supernatural, etc.)
★ Really Sweet Romance
★ Accurate Representation (Themes such as mental illness, abuse/bullying, war, etc.)
☆ Insightful Junk is Thrown In (Personal preference)
☆ Originality
☆ Character Progression
☆ Completely Cuss/Inappropriate Free
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