the romance between Day and June felt unnecessary but that's literally my only complaint about this book. Absolutely stellar

The message "everything dies eventually (except maybe trees)" dragged out over the course of 100 pages. This was the kind of book that makes me think "how awful was every other writer at the time that THIS is what we're considering 'classic'?"

Adored absolutely everything about this book. Main character Jame is amazing, and the side characters are great as well. Hodgell's world building is beautiful, just everything about this book is perfect. I have the next three books in the series and am excited to start them. If there was a single criticism I have for this book, it's that I wanted more content of Cleppetty and Gorgo, but otherwise there's nothing TO criticize.

Nothing objectively wrong with it. I liked it, just didn't love it

Loved the writing and the character Hannah, the plot was good as well (ending of this one gut-punched me a bit), but I hated Kyle as a character because of how poorly written and unrealistic he was, especially in contrast to Hannah.

I wanted to like this book so bad, because the premise was so cool. But the main character is this flawless/Mary Sue type and the adventure is so unrealistic. Every single issue Caity runs into is pretty much immediately resolved, and she's very ambitious, but doesn't do much on her own, it's a lot of other people telling her what to do.
The whole "secret society trying to dominate the world" thing is also garbage. It's an overused trope, and it's not even written well (if you know a lot about where/and how this trope was created, it gets very problematic too). Also, there's this one line where Caity describes her Egyptian friend as "exotic" and that was icky, especially since that was her defining characteristic, not that she was smart or funny or anything, just that she was 'exotic.'
All of these characters are incredibly one dimensional, and the plot is terribly predictable.

I have no idea what I was expecting for the sequel but it was NOT this. Exceeded every expectation

Adored the message, adored the characters, my biggest problem is how insanely unrealistic the ending was. Very mid for poetry in my opinion.

Absolutely did not expect to like it, let alone love it. I'm not into poetry, but Acevedo might have singlehandedly changed that. I love how she writes her characters, I find them insanely relatable despite having absolutely nothing in common with them. And she has this tendency to twist the knife in 10 words or less. The book is about 400 pages, and I have annotations on at least 350 of them.

Predictable ending, but the format of online readers voting on what direction the plot goes is definitely interesting

Guy main character (forgot his name :P) is written mediocrely, but Marley? I freaking loved Marley. I don't even like romance and this was amazing. I personally headcannon Marley as autistic (I doubt she actually is but idc, she's autistic to me) and I think that's at least 75% of why I loved this book. I generally have this snobby "I'm above reading romance novels" attitude, but I really really liked this book. I have some of Lippincott's other books on my TBR.

Used this book for a college course on the Holocaust. As a history major (and someone with a weird, lifelong fascination with the Holocaust), this has become my go-to reference book. It is especially useful in that it almost entirely sidelines Hitler in favor of exploring the pre-existing policies, social and cultural anti-Semitism, and other political players that built the Holocaust. Highly highly recommend for anyone interested in or needing a source for research on the Holocaust.