Status Updates From Tamsin

Meenah felt like a bit of an outsider to the main narrative up until this point - just more of backstory and set-up, how Jenny ended up where she was, on the same level as her American origins or her friends from back home or that weird teacher. But now she's picking up some actual meaning and importance and I'm all in for that.

Slowly but surely, things are progressing somewhere actually exciting.

Well, that took an unexpected turn for romantasy.

Can't see how it could work out, though. She's too old for you, Jenny. And too dead.

There it is! More than a third into the book, wondering when all the supernatural ghost stuff begins. There's just been the occasional bit of mild strangeness that could all have mundane explanations. Nothing nearly definitive. And then, all of a sudden, she just sits there on the protagonist's bed.

It came right out of nowhere - a very jarring twist, in a good way. But I still think the buildup was too long.

Took our sweet time but finally we're getting to the actual story. Even with the good narration, this is some very long prologue.

The premise led me to expect something a little more like The Last Unicorn, so I was rather taken aback... but not for long. Very nice first-person narrative. There's more to a first-person perspective than just giving us everything about the main character and only the main character: you gotta tell it like they were writing the thing. Beagle gets it.