Sigh. This book. I really wanted to like it. Actually, I wanted to love it so much that I would want to rush out and buy a copy for myself. Alas. 
 There was a time when I loved Jaclyn Moriarty's books. I bought them without even questioning. I bought Feeling Sorry for Celia after just randomly spotting it in the bookstore, and I read it in one day and looooooved it. So buying them all worked out well, until it didn't anymore. This was somewhere at the end of the Ashbury/whatever group of books (I forget now what the other school was - started with a B, I think? Brookfield, maybe?). The last one of that "series" or "cluster" of books, The Ghosts of Ashbury High, was when her stories veered off a track I understood (and followed well) and slid into a ravine that, frankly, bewildered me. Then there were the two Listen Taylor books, the one adult novel and the other YA, and those were so off-the-wall that they were nearly unreadable. 
 So it is for this book, although really, my problem is with the first 100 or 150 pages. But it was such a significant problem that I considered giving up on the book. I'm having trouble putting my finger precisely on what I objected to here (and in the books mentioned above), but it has something to do with the way the characters behave. They just don't seem real to me. They are very clearly people someone imagined up, and the imaginer decided that she wanted these people to be bizarre, so she gave them very strange quirks and dialogue and thoughts and behavior, so much that in the end it was just like trying to make a painting with too many colors, and they all blended together and formed a dull brown blob that nobody really wants to look at. 
 For the first third or so, none of the characters seemed like real people. I couldn't get a handle on Cello, but strangely, I had more trouble with Madeleine's plot than Elliot's. Those people had some ridiculous conversations that I couldn't imagine any humans ever having. I mean, take the part where Elliot is worrying that one day he would tell Belle that he thought the word "daft" when he saw her. That is just fucking weird. And not in a cool, look-how-weird-this-guy-is, I-really-want-to-know-him-better way. Just in a way like, who thinks people have thoughts like that? It's so removed from the way that real people think and talk that it was distracting. 
 As I said, I almost gave up on this book. Somewhere around the day the three kids in Cambridge were going to their homeschool classes, I was getting really tired of how hard the book was trying to be kooky and funny and weird, when it was just being weird without any kook or much humor. I don't object to weird, though; see, that's why I'm having trouble explaining what I mean. In theory, the book works. But in actually reading it, the characters are all cardboard figures with a crazy person moving them around. 
 But enough about that, because the feeling mostly faded by page 150 or so, and I did finish the book, and actually, I'm pretty glad I persevered. **minor or possibly major spoilers ahead** 
 Somewhere around the time the Butterfly Child appeared, I began to give a shit about these people. I liked the Bonfire townsfolk; I kept forgetting who everyone was, but I found that the narrator reminded me often enough that it wasn't too much of a problem. I enjoyed the various letters and articles and found a touch of the humor from Feeling Sorry for Celia throughout those. The attacks of Red were pretty delightful, and that was probably my favorite part of the book, except maybe the ending (the Cello ending, anyway). That conversation with Princess Ko at the end almost blew my mind. I really loved that. 
 And whatever her flaws, Jaclyn Moriarty is quite a lovely writer. Observe: 
 Nikki had a giggle that was low and unexpected, rolling across the air between them like marbles. 
 also: 
 Walking across the empty room felt like elbowing through a crowd. 
 These weren't even my favorite ones, just the ones I could find again flipping through the pages. 
 I still have some other quibbles, though, like what was the point of dividing it into parts? There seemed to be no logical division system. I think the chapter breaks would have been sufficient. And what was the point of giving Elliot a love interest for like, two paragraphs of the story? Perhaps that's more of a setup for the rest of the series, but it seemed so lightly touched upon that it probably shouldn't have even been in there at all. 
 Honestly, I kept wondering during the whole book...why do we even need Madeleine's story at all? I see how she's needed for the next book, sure, but her story in this book was flimsy at best. Maybe more to the point, I didn't like her story very much. I was much more interested in the goings-on of Bonfire. That felt like the real story to me, while the Cambridge plot was just slightly boring filler that I had to endure. 
 So, all in all, it was worth reading. I'm not sure if I'd recommend this to anyone else, but if you're already looking at it and thinking about reading it, maybe give it a shot. I am definitely interested to see where the next two books take us, though. I have a feeling the continuation will be more rewarding than the setup.