Liz Rapp

This reads like a long list of things that happen to Patricia. Patricia went to Oxford. Tricia met Mark. Pat met Bee. Tricia had four children. Pat wrote travel books about Italy. The background of her life is interesting, such as nuclear attacks on Miami and Kiev, an alternate assassination of Kennedy, but the overall style of the book becomes tedious. The parallel lives are an interesting concept, but are barely addressed, leading to a feeling of reading two plotlines simultaneously without a satisfying intersection. You might as well read two books at the same time to get a similar effect.

I really liked this. However, I had a real problem keeping the characters straight.

Conversations were kind of a mess. Imagine a rapid conversation between 2-16 newly introduced characters, where the characters are referred to alternatively by their titles, first names, last names, nicknames, or just their house number. I assumed I would adjust as we learned more about each character, but even past the halfway mark I kept finding myself going back to the online character guide to figure out who belonged to what house, who was a necromancer and who a cavalier. At one point I thought that Dulcinea's nickname was Corona, though that is an entirely different character. Later I was often confused if Coronabeth was one of the twins, or the twins' cavalier. It was incredibly confusing to sort out the cast of characters, and thus everyone's motivation except the two main characters was largely a lost cause. I was so relieved anytime it was just Gideon and Harrow cursing at each other, which were also by far the best parts of the novel.

At one point it seemed like even the author couldn't keep the characters straight- Harrow says to Palamedes “Sextus, your necromancer is wounded,” when Sextus is the necro, and his cavalier is the one wounded?

I am looking forward to the sequel. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the universe I am looking forward to seeing fleshed out.

I really enjoyed the style of this book, with Sadie's perspective contrasted with the narrator of a podcast show investigating her disappearance. The audiobook reminds me of Illuminae, in that the fantastic narrators give it the feel of a radio play. You can feel the struggle as Sadie fights to get words out, even as her mental narrative slides smoothly along, it is beautifully acted. Sadie is a wonderfully complicated character, she feels broken and young, and all of her decisions seems kind of crazy but in a really honest way. She doesn't shy away from hurting herself in her pain and rage, blinded by her single minded focus. With nothing left to lose, why shouldn't she put everything into hunting down her little sister's murderer?

Also enjoyed this interview with the author https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/macmillan/the-girls-find-sadie/e/56218100