Initial Impressions 6/29/17: I've heard so many good things about THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT and with having the second and third books on audio from the publisher, I figured it was finally time to buy the first from Audible to get the series binge going! 
 This book really reminded me a lot of Daughter of Smoke & Bone and The Conspiracy of Us with a little urban fantasy feel. The tone of the book was fun, with Echo's sass and sarcasm (always something I enjoy as long as it's done well) and some nice friendships... 
 ... But the ragtag group of misfits don't really jive. They all have different personalities and they sort of seem to be fighting each other, not outwardly as character arguments but the personalities just aren't meshing for me. It really does feel garbled together and not like the misfit group of characters like The Dregs, who are all misfits but all have the same goal and same attitude towards life. 
 THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT was a fun story but it felt sort of... average in a lot of ways. I'll admit, the hype really got to me after seeing a lot of fan-girling reviews so I had some very high expectations. The story was enjoyable BUT I'm not sure it was really worth the hype. One thing I was really missing was the world-building throughout the entire book. I was all for the worlds of the Avicen and the Drakharin but... why do they exist? What are they all about? Were they always in the shadows of the human world, in hidden places or did they have to move there? How did this whole war get started? Who pissed off who? Tell me more about the magic, the history, the reasoning... We got a little of Echo's backstory and how she ended up being taken in by the Avicen but, did she never question who they were and why they existed and why people don't know about t them? 
 Another thing I felt very meh about was the romance, and I'll put this in spoiler tags in case you want to know nothing about it. (view spoiler)[So Echo has an Avicen boyfriend, Rowan, and she meets Dragon Prince Caius and *insert Doug Funny loves Patty Mayonnaise "aahhhhs"* it's love! Okay, fine. I can do love triangles. I'm not sure I love that she flipped to Caius while she never broke up with Rowan, but I can roll with some things. But can we PLEASE stop the immortal-man-loves-teenage-girl romance trope? It's creepy. It's gross. It makes no sense!!! Teenagers don't have anything in common with 30-year-old men much less 250-year-old men. Think about it that way. Imagine a teenager dating a 30-year-old and you go "Ew, how creepy." And 250 years old isn't? Sometimes there's a "reason" like lost souls who find each other again but please lead with that somehow so I'm not creeped out by the old dude and a young girl. Teenagers feel young to ME. I can't even imagine what teenagers must seem like to Caius. End rant. (hide spoiler)] 
 The Firebird hunt was also just sort of... meh. It's something that has already been done (the great hunt for sure and actually for a Firebird in RUIN AND RISING) and it didn't really feel explained very well. It's an animal but it's a spirit but it's an entity? It's not tangible? It's a person? It all kind of blended together and I get it now but it was a little confusing. End of the book spoiler --> 
 (view spoiler)[Of course Echo is the special little snowflake who *gasp* IS the Firebird, not just the seeker, and things continue from there. (hide spoiler)] 
 The more I talk about the book, the more unhappy I am with it. It just didn't seem to really do much. It wasn't intolerable and I'm still going to continue the series binge to see where it goes but I wasn't super impressed with book one. 
 Reiew also posted on The Book Addict's Guide 9/6/17