Well that was a breath of fresh air. I think...I think I actually enjoyed reading this book. 
 BRING FORTH THE LIST, in which SPOILERS are present. Mostly in the part about the ending. 
 Ash 
 What is this, a main character I don't want to punch? OH MY GOD, FETCH THE PHOTOGRAPHERS, THIS MOMENT MUST BE COMMEMORATED. 
 Seriously though, I actually really liked Ash. She was real. Multifaceted. Capable of being more than one thing at any given time. Also she had an arc, you guys. A real-live arc, where she changed and made mistakes and got called out on shit and learned more about herself. YES. THIS. WOULD LIKE MORE OF THIS. A+ 
 In fact, this book is kinda entirely arc-based. The conflicts and resolutions revolve more than usual around Ash's evolving understanding of herself and her relationships with other people, which is kind of a mixed bag in terms of execution, but I'll get to that later. For now: yay, Ash. Even when I didn't agree with what you were doing, I generally understood why you were doing it. 
 So Many Ladies 
 Yessss, there were so many ladies in this book. So many ladies, in such varying shades, which is really the important part. The women of Ash come in so many flavors - they are kind and cruel and loving and negligent, cheerful and sullen and quiet and smart, in differing degrees, and sometimes - gasp - all of those things. Some are allies, some are indifferent, and some are outright adversarial, but that is all okay, and you know why? Because there are so goddamn many of them. There isn't just one or two ways to be a woman in Ash. There are dozens. 
 It worked out pretty well, reading Ash immediately after Cinder, because the former answered a question the latter had left me pondering: is it fair to call a Cinderella retelling out on heinous Alpha Bitch syndrome? Because I mean, the evil stepsisters and evil stepmother are key components to the conflict in a Cinderella tale, and the role that they play is a large part of what makes a Cinderella story identifiable. Is it even possible to incorporate that element (with Cinderella as hero), without actively condoning that kind of harmful characterization? Is it possible to create a truly girl-positive adaptation of the classic Cinderella story? 
 Turns out, YEP. You totally can, and it's not even hard. You just have to write characters who are human beings. 
 So our Cinderella still has two step-sisters. One is cruel, one is kinder, but they are both treated like people who exist beyond their given role of making Ash's life miserable. They have their own goals and problems, triumphs and miseries, and the most important part is that Ash both recognizes and acknowledges this. 
 So we can still have a sister who is mostly mean to Ash and takes advantage of her position and does incredibly unkind, petty things, but we are also shown that same girl when she is scared, when she is love-struck, when she is anxious about her future. She is more than just a caricature reduced to her simplest, most unflattering characteristic. 
 The point is, I feel like Malinda Lo is putting a lot more confidence in her readers. She is trusting us to be able to simultaneously root for Ash and have empathy for her tormenters. She's trusting and encouraging us not to hate other female characters just because they're there, or we "should", or they want the same thing as our protagonist, or a different thing, or are standing in our protagonist's way. Woman does not automatically equal enemy in Ash the way it does in so many other books. 
 I feel like Ash is saying, "Hey, maybe we should all just be kinder to one another because shit sucks and internalized misogyny doesn't help anyone." 
 OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT I GOT OUT OF IT. 
 Bonus: Ash puts a shitton of emphasis on the relationship between Ash and her mother and Ash's battle to get over her death, and that is fucking awesome, because mother-daughter relationships in YA, where u at? 
 Also, There was Romance 
 ...and it was yet another aspect that I enjoyed, which is probably a good thing, since the second half of the book is devoted almost exclusively to developing it. But yeah, it really worked for me. I've read complaints that there was too little of Kaisa and half the book wasn't enough to develop her relationship with Ash, and while I, too, wish Kaisa had been in the book longer, I'm completely satisfied with the way their relationship played out. 
 The problem I run in to most often with romantic relationships in paranormal whatnot is that they're very often reliant on destiny and insta!love to bring and keep a couple together, and I'm always like, "OH MY GOD, what are you kids thinking?!? You literally just met like two sentences ago!" But with Ash, there's a real feeling of time here - time and progression. Kaisa and Ash are initially attracted to one another, yes - even though Ash, at least, doesn't immediately realize it - but they spend time together after that, specifically for the purpose of getting to know one another. It just works so much better for me, because I can legitimately buy the bond that they form and the attachment that they begin to feel to one another. 
 It probably helps that I sort of loved Kaisa, possibly more than I liked Ash? She's endlessly patient and compassionate, charming and kind - a YA love interest, kind! WHAT A NOVEL IDEA, RIGHT. Anyway, she doesn't play games, she's up front about all of her intentions, but doesn't push or press or guilt, and she's in no way ashamed of Ash or their love. She's just an all-around solid LI. 
 Bonus: the book doesn't rely on snark to communicate attraction, and my god that was refreshing. I mean, I'm down with snarky love as much as the next person, but seriously, there is more than one way for couples to interact. 
 Sidhean 
 This dude was criminally under-developed. Am I supposed to have cared about Sidhean? Because I didn't. I would have liked to. I would have liked to have known more about him, to feel like he was actually some sort of character, rather than a pretty mannequin who just followed Ash around. I think that would have given Ash's emotional conflict more weight. But fuck, maybe that's the point. Maybe Sidhean is just supposed to be some pretty, inscrutable symbol who doesn't really matter beyond his symbolic significance to Ash. 
 Wait, did Malinda Lo just write a dude the way most dudes write women? 
 Fairytales & World-Building 
 I actually find these two aspects of the story to be simultaneously two of the strongest and weakest elements of the story. WORLD-BUILDING. IT'S HARD. Nobody likes exposition, so how do you communicate the history and culture of your setting, relevant to the plot and characters, without awkwardly staging a long series of boring info-dumps that will put your readers to sleep? Well, if you're Malinda Lo writing Ash, you use fairytales... 
 Complete review at You're Killing.Us