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3.9 AVERAGE

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

5 stars for the majority of the book. 0 stars for the ending. I am mad!!!
adventurous dark tense 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: Complicated
adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative 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: Complicated

Meh. Setting was fun and different. The writing was simple which didn't allow me to enjoy the journey of the story as much.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
adventurous dark mysterious tense 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: Complicated
adventurous mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

3.5 rounding down for the whole will they won't they projection of perfect boyfriend thing.. I mean, that aside it was a short fun read. The pre ending stuff was great, the actual ending was slightly too neat. To be honest it's a perfectly good coming of age novel so add a star if you're up for that. I felt like the pacing was a bit off, too breathtaking but also weirdly hollow, like the places were little more than the mission impossible style place names.
That sounds harsher than I meant to make it sound. The main characters are deftly portrayed and there's a lot of good character growth. I may not read this again but it's interesting and the Mayan aspect is nice so... Rounding up to 4. If you ignore the whole forcefully projecting / kinda hypnotically enslaving someone good looking cuz, why not.

4.5 I wasn't super into this book for most of it but it is actually a really good book! I think it just wasn't the right moment to read it for me because I was coming off the poppy war which is so intense and dark and full of very cruel and bad characters that I still loved. Gods of jade and shadow is very much a traditional fairytale style story with the morals and tropes there which I think I just wasn't super in the mood for but it was super well done! I especially loved how the author described the zeitgeist and history of each different Mexican city they were in, I really thought she did a great job capturing the time period and building a really rich sense of place and culture. Took me a while to get into but I really honestly loved the ending and while I might not have super been in the mood for it, I ended up really enjoying it!