Dear Amber, 
 I fear my feelings about Skellig are going to disappoint you. I didn't love it. Now that could be because it came to me too late in life to truly adore the story of the strange owl/angel/man, or perhaps I am too damn jaded, or it could just be that I no longer seem able to completely enjoy something just for the sake of enjoyment. I don't like that about me, but there it is. 
 Don't get me wrong. I liked Skellig plenty. I liked it enough that I've recommended it to Te and Los, and Scoutie has already started reading it, and I blew through it at top speed, wanting to see how things played out. 
 There is much to admire in Almond's book. Michael, the protagonist, is a wonderful boy, a kind sensitive protagonist much like a little boy I know, and boys like that are underrepresented in literature (it seems to me). Mina, Michael's friend, is a fierce, uncompromising home schooled girl with a deep love of William Blake (kind of like an Amber I know) and an open, welcoming, searching view of all the potentials in the world. They are a delightful pair to spend time with, and their care of Skellig made me cheer for them. 
 Skellig him(it)self was another victory for Almond. Skellig could easily have been misused. Too much Skellig and the book would have been a fraction as good as it was. Too little Skellig and what would be the point. And if Almond had chosen to tell us everything about Skellig, to spoon feed us Skellig's "truth," I might have been moved to toss the book on the barbecue. But no, the amount of Skellig was perfect. 
 Yet I closed the book as an admirer rather than a lover. Why the distance? It was Almond's fence sitting when it came to the secular and the religious. His position lacked the subtlety of the rest of the novella, and each time the fence sitting appeared it pulled me out of the story. 
 The tension in the book between evolution and the existence of the supernatural was so forced that I couldn't concentrate on the characters or what they were doing; it felt a bit too much like the wife in the Murder of Gonzago. And I think this was a lost opportunity for Almond. The middle ground between science and the supernatural -- which is where I think most of the people I know personally would situate themselves -- doesn't get enough representation in our pop culture. The fight between the most credulous believers and the unbelievers gets all the play, but those folks somewhere in the middle are a bigger group by far (at least that's my guess) than the ones on the ends of the spectrum, and they are forced to listen to those who don't share their opinions all the time. Yet here, finally, they get a book looking at things from their perspective, but Almond strayed to far from just showing them the middle ground and entered the realm of lecturing on the middle ground. And that bummed me right out. 
 So I liked this book. I liked it very much. But I couldn't love it, Amber. I am sorry. 
 Love, Brad