A war between Earth and Faerie has left the world changed and ruined forever, where even the plants and trees are no longer to be trusted and will even kill you if they have the chance. Sound awesome? I think so! But unfortunately for me, the execution made on this story about a post-apocalyptic future touched by the effects of magic just didn't live up to my expectations. 
 As I said, I really liked the idea the author was working with here and is the reason I read this book. A war between the people of Earth and Faerie sounded too good to pass up, and the general story itself was interesting enough to hold my attention the whole way through. However, the characters were so flat and uninteresting half the time that I felt zero connection with any of them save for perhaps Allie. I felt like I was thrown head first into the story without getting to know the characters so that I could feel for them or care about their struggles. Matthew is a great example of this. Even the elements of surprise, those I felt that the author was trying to achieve, were lackluster and had no meaning because it was like they were dumped on me too soon without any sort of build up. I did like some of the characters, but I wish they could have been fleshed out more so I didn't have to feel so disconnected. 
 My biggest criticism about the story is the main character. I just plain didn't like her. And the fact that the narrative was spoken by her, it made it all the worse. She was two-dimensional, depressing, and straight out annoying. However, considering her situation, like her father abusing her and other sad things that's revealed about her life, it's somewhat understandable. But again, the writing here couldn't bring it all together in a way that I could relate to her. If you don't mind an "emo" (couldn't think of a better word for it) character and narrative then you will probably like this book a lot more than I did. I'm just not into that sort of thing. 
 A lot of the description in this book was really nice, and the way the author painted this post-apocalyptic world was, as I mentioned earlier, interesting enough to hold my attention, although some of the ideas to describe somethings were just plain bad in my opinion. For example, magic touched people have clear hair. Hair as clear as glass. I can't help, I think that's really stupid. On the other hand, the way the forest operated was awesome. I wouldn't want to live in such a place but reading about it was great. 
 So, you may be thinking "why give this book three stars if you sound like you didn't like it that much?" Perhaps it sounds that way but I honestly did like the story itself well enough. Even though I found the execution not to my liking, the main character annoying, the characters two-dimensional, I thought it was a good little story about a post-apocalyptic future and magic. It's not the best story I've read but it was still good.