I liked it, it was a fun read I recommend reading it!

I don’t know how it was possible to predict such twists and turns!

I had no idea how this book would end. I’m glad that I didn’t guess the twist!

An exciting book filled with twists at every turn!

This book was such a great dive into the world and history of code breaking! It was a fascinating read and I highly recommend.

i loved this book, it was an amazing book will read again!

I have to admit I chuckled when I saw 'a literary vampire novel' come up as the official subtitle of this work, specifically because I felt what really made it an up-and-down read for me was its attempt to balance so much between being literary and horror, and I too often felt like the author wanted to write a literary novel, but 'make it vampire!', whereas I think I would have been far more satisfied by either a literary novel OR a horror novel, despite the fact that I often like mixed-genre work. I did appreciate some of the character-study aspects here. The way the author incorporated issues of mental health and essentially made vampirism an eating disorder for the protagonist worked really well. The problem was that it felt like the novel was always either in literary mode or horror moved, and for a short novel, it opened up too many threads and then attempted to resolve them far too neatly, so that the ending was incredibly unsatisfying and underwhelming, as far as I was concerned. I guess I can see why there was some hype around this book, but I don't see myself picking up something else by the author or recommending this one.

Great

There's a lot to admire about Sanders' writing, but I can't help being a bit underwhelmed by the book itself here. As slice-of-life fiction goes, the scenes are wonderfully written, and the characters brought to life on every page without fail. At the same time, while the ten-year-old Clover makes for an entertaining protagonist and narrator at many points, she's also one of the problems with the work as a whole, as there are so often moments when her thoughts/words so clearly feel like the author's own thoughts/words stepping in to shape the story vs those that would come from a child. Similarly, there's such focus on the girl's summer and memories, and on making her the strong young protagonist she's meant to be, there's a certain lack of emotion which makes the book somewhat one-note even when it's tackling it's most serious territory. So, I suppose in the end I have mixed feelings. I admire the author's writing, but the story as a whole feels like it's somewhat lackluster, more built of short stories pulled together into a novel than a fully developed story that's got all it needs to be. I feel like I'd love to read a short story collection from the author, but I'm not sure I'd pick up another novel from her.

Loved it! Looking forward to reading more of her books as this was my first