Nic

I really liked this one - engaging mystery, humour, and some delightfully frustrating characters. It didn't quite have the emotional impact of the first book, but I guess that makes sense in the context. Though I did have fun exploring Ernest's relationship and seeing just how how much of an idiot he is - very enjoyable.
Unfortunately, like the first one, I found there to be way too much info dumped on me right at the end. Too much for me to ever guess it all, even if I can guess whodunnit based off vibes. Which is kind of annoying, because Stevenson is good at drip feeding clues - I just wish we got more of those big revelations throughout the book, so it wasn't such a leap to the solve at the end.
I hope he writes another one.

I liked the characters, but the way the world worked was a bit arbitrary at times, making the plot much less engaging.

As someone not from NY, Jemisin did a great job of showing what the city is like and portraying authentic experiences - She said she did a ton of research in the acknowledgements and I totally believe it.

Fun book from my childhood!

I don't think it's the best in the series, but lots of fun with plenty of wonderful characters. It gets surprisingly intense at some points, but also a little easy for the protagonists sometimes.

Pretty writing as always and lovely descriptions.

Somehow this book is about, like...working environments? The villains get into trouble because they create environments in which their employees are fighting for dominance and trying to get the promotion from each other. The protagonists do well because they work together and let people collaborate and cooperate. Definitely not what this book is about, but also it definitely is.

I thought this was delightful!

Certainly not a perfect book (main thing is probably the extremely thin romances), but I had lots of fun exploring the language. I normally find epistolary novels kind of boring, but I was engaged the whole time and read it pretty quick, so props to Mark. The characters were fun and quirky and there was a combination of really sweet moments and higher stakes than I expected.