You ever read a book where the plot is so good but the writing is just so, so bad? Like I don't even know where to start with this. It's supposed to be set in the 1920s but the slang is all wrong. But not just wrong in a single way, it's all over the place. 20s slang but also like 40s noir and also modern day? What the hell? And it's not just bad slang, it's just poor use of language - the casual racism aside (oh yes that's very edgy and time period correct of course), the author keeps using all kinds of strange words for common things, calling cigarettes, like, lit ones being smoked, cigarette butts (they're not butts until they're out) or just "cigs" which would be fine in dialogue but is just used in regular narrative? 
 And the characters are so immediately transparent and hopeless in every possible way it's utterly juvenile. They're also hopelessly one-dimensional. I made it 150 pages and I still don't know who I'm supposed to care about and why - I mean, I know I'm supposed to care about Joan and Alex because of the chapter headings. But I don't give one single shit about them otherwise. They're both entirely flat and mostly unlikable. 
 But the story is fucking amazing: it's prohibition but instead of alcohol being banned, Magic is banned because it FUCKING GETS YOU HIGH. (Select members of the population will now understand why I like this so much.) It's like trying to listen to beautiful music through nails on a chalkboard and just aaaauuuugh. Who TF edited this? Actually - I know who edited this because weirdly, the acknowledgements are at the beginning for some reason which stood out to me from the very first second as being really odd, and it certainly lived up to that strange, altered expectation. It's fucking shameful. This reads like a high school creative writing exercise. Come on. Do better. I was looking forward to this book before it came out. That doesn't happen often. I don't know that I've ever been so let down. Two stars ONLY for the neat use of magic as a drug, and even that's a stretch. One point five if I'm honest.