This is the first for-fun book I've been able to sit down and read straight through for a while. Holly Black is hit or miss for me, but this one was definitely a hit. 
 1. THE ATMOSPHERE. Oh my. Perfect, creepy, and lots of fun. 
 2. I liked Hazel! A lot! She was a badass but not JUST a badass. She had all these problems and insecurities and fuck-ups and I was just really on board with it. 
 3. I like fun books with lots of handsome men okay. Deal with it. 
 4. I felt a nice undercurrent of social commentary throughout the book -- pointed, but not too preachy or heavy-handed. It played a role in the story without BECOMING the story. A+ Holly Black. 
 5. Related to #4: "After all, in Fairfold, the Folk only hurt tourists, so if you got hurt, you must be acting like a tourist, right? You must have done something wrong. Someone must have done something wrong. So long as there was someone else to blame, no one ever had to admit how powerless they were." 
 6. Gay people! Straight people! Bisexual people! People of color! People who fall in love hard and fast like a fairytale! People who are prickly and struggle against it the whole goddamn way! People who suck and get better, or suck and don't get better, or are just sort of okay, or kind of hobble along doing the best they can but still fuck up a lot! 
 7. Summary of #6: Holly Black wrote well-rounded characters and not caricatures! This story was populated with PEOPLE. Like, real people. Not a weird freakishly homogenous society. 
 8. This story had two of my favorite things: villains who really are just bad-to-the-core terrible people who you can feel free to hate as much as you want AND sympathetic villains who are just struggling against the things that have been done to them and do terrible things because of it. 
 All in all an entertaining, engaging story that really tugs you into the world Holly Black has created here.