The Magpie Society 02: Two for Joy

Ugh, all right. If “sooo brilliante, Harriet” (Wild Child) and “we know about the philosopher’s stone” (HP1) had a child, which would be adopted by another child, who’d would turn out to be the girl from that meme, standing in front of a burning house with a creepy grin on her face. Yeah, that sounds about right. Writing style, definitely improved since the first book. The inconsistent use of American and British English (spelling) was kind of annoying to me though. Still stand by my point that Illumen Hall is the best character in the entire duology. I enjoyed most of the dialogue and suspense, it was quite fast-paced (too much so?? Felt like I was caught inside some wacky whirlwind half the time) and the plot twist definitely made me smile, but overall the plot wasn’t great. It’s giving “by teens, for teens” and “let’s play detective!” And while, admittedly, I still love me some YA, romanticised, private-English-boarding-school vibes, this duology would probably do better with a younger audience.

The ending wow, I was going to give it 3 stars but that final chapter put it way up to 5/5.