(Also on my blog!) 
 What I expected: thinly veiled Harry Potter expies. 
 What I got: Well developed characters!!! Strong females!!! A touching love story!!! 
 MAGIC!!! LOVE!!! WORLD BUILDING!! 
 You GUYS. Look, I feel guilty for going in with those expectations. I never read Fangirl, so I had no knowledge of the Simon Snow universe going into this book. But guys. GUYS this book is so good. What I thought was going to be a magical boarding school Harry Potter ripoff story turned out to be so engrossing and so vivid that I stayed up all night to finish the book. 
 I feel like I cannot emphasize how much I loved the world building. I highlighted so many passages just because they straight up TICKLED me with glee ("My dad loves marriage rites. Any sort of family magic, actually. He and my mother are bound together in five dimensions.") I remember a Tumblr post a while back that was like "I want fantasy mixed with modern technology," and I want to shove this book in the air and say "LOOK HERE!!!!" 
 Also, I usually hate stories that switch point of views. I feel that it's sort of a cop out for the writer, a simple way to tell not show. But it works in this case. It doesn't just switch between two characters, but between almost everyone which was great because sometimes the Chosen One's POV can get boring. 
 The love story ended up being very touching and natural. You could see the Harry/Draco inspiration in how Simon was obsessed with Baz and how Baz was a rich douchebag from a prominent family. But it evolved into its own story so fantastically that they grew past this inspiration.