Reviews4

Read this when you need to believe that ordinary people can carry impossible weight — and that the friends who walk beside you are worth more than any magic.

Klune walks a tightrope between saccharine and sincere, and mostly sticks the landing. The found family dynamics are earned, not forced. Linus's transformation from bureaucratic drone to fierce protector is the character arc of the year. My one reservation: the 'magical minority as metaphor' framing can feel heavy-handed. But when it works — and it usually does — it works beautifully. Lucy's character alone is worth the read.

Circe is the friend you wish you'd had in your twenties — fierce, lonely, learning to trust herself one catastrophe at a time. Madeline Miller writes mythology like it happened yesterday.

The first half is brilliant — the museum bombing sequence is some of the best prose I've read. The second half meanders. Still, there are sentences in this book I've memorized.