Such a great story! Loved reading this just in time for halloween! Overall a cute and quick read for halloween

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book

First of all, I loved the premise--it immediately sounded cool to me, and I think that's a special quality in and of itself.

Second of all, I had never heard of the series going into this and had never read any of the other books before, which was definitely a mistake on my part. I think the book itself sufficiently explains a lot of the plot and the characters sufficiently well, so while it's a confusing reading experience it isn't unreadable. With that being said, take what I'm saying here with a grain of salt.

I think the pacing of the novel is weird, at times it overexplains and at others it underexplains. The actual plot of the novel starts pretty late within it, where it definitely could have started earlier to allow the ending more time to come together. It should slow down and allow the parts that need to breathe more time.

I was definitely uncomfortable with some of the parts, such as the heavily sexual interactions between the main protagonist and some of her former teachers--not sure why that was included. I like how it's open about sexuality, and I think it tries to develop some ideas on that topic, but where it misses for me is that it never has the time to actually go into it. I would have loved to see more though, since I think it adds to Amelie as a character.

The book is very good at building up suspense and hinting at the mystery behind it, which I liked. While it could have taken more time to delve into it, the whole mystery and twist around the protagonists deciding who to trust was nice, and it made sense in the context of the book. I think the book has a lot of strong points and the plot itself is interesting, my main issue is that it doesn't take enough time to fully delve into each of the finer details.

The writing itself is nice, and it flows well when read, and most of the dialogue is realistic. There are some parts, however, with awkward writing and clunky dialogue. While these aren't too distracting, they do sort of bring you out of the reading experience. And there is a huge amount of telling throughout the novel rather than showing, which does make it harder to get through, as there is a lot of just information dumping that can be hit or miss depending on the context.

Overall, I think it's a decent book with a strong premise, although I think it could have taken more time to delve into the action promised in the premise itself. It has a lot of promise and it does deliver on that promise to an extent.

I would give it 3.5 stars, but I'll round it up to 4 here.