4.45 AVERAGE

emotional medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
adventurous emotional funny informative inspiring lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous hopeful inspiring lighthearted fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Beautifully written and incredibly delightful cast of characters. 

The core audience for this book is definitely younger teenagers - The romance elements are understandably limited. The real life situations children face when they're considered different and are taken away from their communities and placed in government facilities historically is heavily heavily softened. There were several moments at the beginning where I thought the author might explore these darker events,
but it seemed like he turned away and chose the simpler, happier ending.


There is a controversy with this book where the author explicitly mentions being influenced by the 'Sixties Scoop'  where Indigenous Canadian children were taken from their families and put in foster homes or adopted out  https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/03/17/the-big-idea-tj-klune/?amp . While I do think this story could represent a broad number of situations where marginalized communities are abused, for a white author to explicitly and intentionally exchange indigenous children for magical creatures, deeply sanitize their trauma is, and then act like the foster home/adopted by a white family is a good thing... is super bad.
lighthearted relaxing slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes