Welcome to our somehow first ?? Our Trust Fund’s book club! Just like everything we do these days, it didn’t go off without a hitch, but we had fun regardless. Sydney started the OTF Book Club with high hopes and, after a short poll among the group, we selected Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea. After reading for double the time we originally planned (we were supposed to talk about this book, like, three months ago?), we finally got together to discuss our reactions. Firstly? None of us expected it to be nearly 600 pages? I may not have gotten that right, since I read it on my Kindle I didn’t have page numbers.
If after reading our conversation you’re interested in reading The Starless Sea, check it out on Bookshop.org so we can stick it to Bezos (that being said, it’s backordered so…try your local store??)
Shelby L: So who fucking loved this book?
Aimée H: I liked it!
Sydney W: I didn’t hate it.
AH: Yeah.
Lizzy R: I didn’t hate it.
SAW: It was hard.
Kayla V: I think I liked it more than “like”...but I didn’t “love” it? I’m in between a like and love.
SAW: I liked the concept more than the execution.
KV: I agree! *emphatically*
AH: I was gonna say, I feel like a lot of fantasy writers run into this–writers of books, games, movies, whatever–where they're so good at worldbuilding, but the story lacks. There were parts of [this book] where I was so into it, but by the end of it, I don’t think she stuck the landing.
Blaze H: Mmm.
KV: I agree.
LR: I thought Zachary was a little boring? And to the point that he was a little hard to root for.
BH: Mmmm. (again)
AH: Yeah.
SAW: He was always walking around so doofusy–always like, “What’s going on?”
LR: He never got with it.
KV: I feel like it was one of those stories where she built it up so much and you get to the very end and nothing happens?
SAW: Yes.
KV: She didn’t describe anything. We get all this backstory, and build-up to what’s going on, like where he is in his own story?
LR: But then nothing is happening at the same time?
KV: And then each chapter will jump!
SAW: I didn’t necessarily understand why him?
LR: Yeah.
KV: Which gets us to not rooting for the main character – if you don’t know why, why them, then what's the point? I also felt that there were some dead ends, like his mom, the fortune teller, saying, “I will see my son and his husband again,” and then we never get that?
AH: Yeah, yeah.
LR: I also didn’t get the gay? I felt that neither of them were ever actually interested in the other?
SAW: I AGREE! It wasn’t until the very end that I was like, “Oh, I forgot he was gay.”
SL: See, I thought they were gay and hot for each other the whole time, but that’s–
SAW: Missed it completely.
LR: I pictured Dorian as a 55-year-old man and was like, “Why is he into him?”
BH: Oh no…
AH: There was a lot of weird age stuff because – not to jump the other direction – but I hated the whole Mirabel and the Keeper romance. Because I’m like, okay, they might both be immortal or whatever, but in reality he’s in an old man’s body and she is in a young woman’s body, and it is a little bit weird.
LR: Confusing – I didn’t see that coming until the end when they were like, “By the way, it’s all a circle!”
KV: I felt like a lot of the love was “end of the world” love, like they know the end of the world is coming so you just pick the person closest to you and are just like, “I love you.” I felt like all the relationships in this book were like that: Dorian and Zachary was this end of the world love–they saw each other, knew some end of the world shit was going to go down, and said, “I love you”; Eleanor and Simon were in their own worlds, they came together and said, “We don’t have any time, so I love you!” It was a lot of … that. She never built on their love so I didn’t believe any of it.
AH: Like Shelby, I bought the attraction between Zachary and Dorian. But near the end when they both started saying things like, “I think I’m falling in love with him,” I was like, “How??”
SAW: Yeah, like, “When??”
AH: It’s only been a couple of days??
KV: End of the world love! I didn’t buy it.
SL: Playing devil’s advocate, and not that I don’t agree–it had been basically a day since they met and are now suddenly in love randomly–but I do feel like the time thing, and how all that works down there, makes that all the more complicated.
SAW: Complicated, but also if she was using that as the reason why it was moving fast, I feel like she should have dropped more hints. Lizzy and I missed it completely.
LR: Yeah.
SL: Has anyone read her other book?
ALL: No.
KV: I will preface everything by saying I made a real, crucial, reader error prior to starting this book: I read the Goodreads reviews.
ALL: *gasps* Oh no!
KV: And I didn’t read the spoilers, but I did read the one-star reviews which muddled my perception of what the book was going to be like, but then I ended up liking it more than I thought it would because of the reviews! But yeah, I fucked up.
BH: What were the one-star reviews?
KV: Basically saying that the book got more hype than it should have, that there were a lot of circles and no one really believed what was going on, and I agreed with that, but I was invested.
SAW: I agree too–I’m the one who suggested this book, which, I’m an unreliable recommender because I cannot remember the last time I read the back of a book. I didn’t know what this book was about; I had zero idea! I knew the genre, and I knew that people really fucking liked it, so I thought, “Cool,” and since I’ve owned the book for already a year–it’s been sitting on my shelf.
LR: I think it’s such a cool concept, I just don’t think she did it well. It was too many circles, too complex of a world,
SL: See…I loved it.
SAW: I don’t know if anyone has seen / read The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, but the writing in this book reminded me of that book. I didn’t like The Magicians for different reasons, but they had a similar writing style that also didn’t draw me in. Does that make sense? The chapters were short.
KV: They’re very short.
SAW: I was having whiplash trying to keep it all together.
LR: It kind of helped, though, cause then I would finish a chapter and then go do something else.
AH: Yeah, I liked that too! *laughs*
BH: Me too.
SL: I like short chapters, too.
KV: I will say that I only like flip-flopping like that when it’s in third person. I hate books that flip-flop in first person. So I appreciated it being in third person so you could keep up with everything in the different chapters.
SL: So if I may be dramatic, I had no fucking clue about this book at all. I knew about The Night Circus but had not read it, and really had no idea it was the same person. So I got this on my Kindle and I’ll start by saying I liked this book so much that I want to own it in book form.
LR: You can have mine.
SL: I was reading the first few pages thinking, “What the fuck is this book pick, Sydney? I don’t get it at all.” And then, just like Zachary, it startled me. I gasped audibly when it was his name in the book, when it was him reading the book about his life. To me, this book and story is some type of literary genius that I had not encountered yet. It was so artful, in my opinion, that I was caught off guard and felt that I had whiplash too, but not in that same way.
LR: Him reading the book got me fucked up, but from there it didn’t get better.
SAW: *laughs*
LR: I was like, “Yes!” but then was like ,“You’re not doing anything with it?”
SL: Right! And that’s part of the discussion! There’s so much in the book that it can be too much for some, but isn’t that stories?
KV: That was one thing I was thinking when reading: this story is written for people who love stories. It was specifically written for people who have a love for storytelling, stories, books, not just reading, but really have a love for stories. I think the book did that justice. I was proud of myself, but one thing that I did pick up was when she refers to him as Zachary when he’s outside of his own story, but when he’s in his story, he’s “the son of the fortune teller.”
AH: Yeah!
KV: I was like woah! I picked something up!
AH: I was proud of myself for picking some things up, too. When they got into things with Simon and she wrote, “He could hear the pianoforte,” I was like, “He’s from the nineteenth century!!” And I knew they were Mirabel’s parents, and that was when it really picked up for me.
LR: I didn’t get the painter and Allegra connection until the actual end.
AH: I got that! Because of the eye.
SAW: The middle of the book, for a longish period of time, I was wondering if they were all the same person.
KV: So I did get Mirabel and Eleanor all jumbled together.
SAW: I was thinking that all the female characters were one, and all the male characters were actually Zachary, just in different timelines.
AH: That’s interesting.
SL: I was getting that vibe as well.
SAW: I really held onto that for a long time, thinking, “This is what the twist is going to be.”
KV: I agree with you. With all the individual stories, like the pirate and the maid, all the stories are based on true love, so I thought maybe all the stories are the same story.
SAW: I thought it was different timelines converging, which it was…
AH: It was!
BH: Yeah.
SAW: I just thought it was all the same people.
LR: I didn’t think Mirabel and Eleanor were going to be different people. In the cycle of things, I thought they were the same. So for everyone being actively alive and living at the end, together, I was like, “Fuck!”
BH: I was shocked when Mirabel was their child. I was very surprised; I was not expecting that. I also thought Zachary was Simon for a long time–like at the party, when the redhead guy came up to him, I thought it was going to be a past version of him.
SL: Has anyone watched Doctor Who?
ALL: *silence*
SL: That’s fine, I’ll just end that there. That’s your loss.
ALL: *laughs*
KV: I get that stories need to have a villain, which is Allegra’s character I guess, but even in the end when she died, I still never believed that she was the villain.
LR: Isn’t Mirabel also a little bit of the villain?
AH: YES!
SAW: Yeah, definitely thought it was Mirabel.
AH: It depends on your perspective.
LR: That was the biggest shock to me that she was the bitch who planned it all.
AH: Yeah, it’s asking if you agree with the story needing to end or do you think it shouldn’t have, which is basically Team Mirabel or Team Allegra.
KV: She says she doesn’t make the choices–she just kind of bumps it along–but still she’s creating the choices.
AH: Yeah, she forced Dorian to kill Zachary? That’s fucked up.
LR: But why was Heaven bees? Why was the kitchen bees?
AH: Yeah, that was weird. The honey in the center of the Earth doesn’t make sense.
LR: Just eating magical bee vomit for every meal?
SL: No, it was so weird and so trippy!
SAW: Honestly, that was the one thing that I was like, “Yeah, this is fine.” We were looking for the Starless Sea, so I didn’t question the room of bees and honey.
AH: Blaze mentioned the redhead guy; I wish there had been any follow up there. I wish there was a follow up on the Owl King, too, because I don’t feel like I understand that.
KV: Agreed! Because the Parliament of Owls were also painted as the villain because they tore Fate and Time apart! But then the club was called the Owl Club, so I didn’t know if the owl people were supposed to be good or bad–I didn’t know their role.
LR: Those little guys kept going to the owls? There were no connectors, no finalizing.
SL: I wonder if it's one of those stories where all the answers are there, you just have to read it more than once.
BH: I thought Zachary was the Owl King because they kept mentioning feathers by him, he had vision issues with his glasses, and how he could read the books and understand all the languages.
KV: Well the Owl King does have a special sight.
BH: And when he and Dorian are talking, and he’s speaking the different languages to him?
AH: Oh shit!!
KV: We’re all mindblown over this.
LR: Alright, I vibe with that.
BH: I thought Zachary was going to have to kill Dorian because I thought Dorian was the current Owl King, because he had the sword of the previous Owl King killer?
LR: Didn’t Zachary hand Dorian the sword through a dream?
BH: Yeah, and then Dorian used the sword to kill Zachary, but I still think Zachary is the Owl King.
AH: I think you’re right.
SL: This bitch sat down and wrote this.
BH: *laughs*
SL: You think Blaze and I are high right now? This bitch sat down and wrote this book. And all of us read it.
LR: I want the editor that was like, “Ready for production.”
SAW: You know this is the second book, too–this book does not get published as the first book.
AH: You’re right.
SL: She went all out for it to be, then, anything you can imagine it to be. If it was grounded at all, the story wouldn’t work.
SAW: So I didn’t like the book, but I respect it. Similar to how I feel about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
SL: I literally don’t want to have this conversation with you.
LR: I felt the exact same way.
SAW: I actually like The Starless Sea better than The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but I respect both. I read Addie LaRue and got what everyone was saying, but decided it wasn’t for me. Same with The Starless Sea.
SL: All that’s besides the point. I’m shutting this down. Blaze, you were going to say something?
BH: The crux of the issue of the heart of the Starless Sea is the dollhouse? Where you make up your own story?
KV: And everyone who comes into your story, they take or do something. Like how everyone who comes into your life…
SL: …leaves something and/or takes something.
KV: Even if they’re not trying to. So I love that metaphor, of the room/dollhouse being your story, your world, and anyone who comes in, leaves a piece.
LR: I just thought for something so Fate driven, he didn’t make any of his own decisions or didn’t want to make his own decisions?
KV: But isn’t that Fate? That you don’t make your own decisions, everything is already predetermined?
AH: Yeah.
LR: But that’s the whole thing–is your life determined by Fate or do you get your choices? And for him to, I feel, not contemplate any of that.
SL: What about that quote I pulled? Zachary observes at one point that reading a novel is like “playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game.”
AH: I was very pro-video game talk in the book. There wasn’t a ton of it, but it was true. You can spend hours and hours and hours in a game and you do kind of get to make your own choices in a way you don’t when you read. I thought that commentary was interesting.
LR: I felt like it was weird to add in for something that was so…old-timey set? I feel like video games feel so modern and nothing else in the book did.
KV: Well, I guess you could say it was opening up Kat’s story since in the end it was her story and her story is modern and is centered around video games, so I guess you could say it was setting that up.
SAW: I didn’t understand why, in the last hundred pages, she suddenly decides to bring Kat in and nothing happens.
AH: Sequel!
BH: Yeah.
LR: I hope not.
KV: I won’t read it. *laughs*
SL: I feel like there won’t be a sequel. I feel like The Night Circus is really popular and she didn’t write a sequel for that when she could have.
SAW: She doesn't seem like the type of person to write this book and then say, “I have a sequel because there’s more story!” That doesn’t seem like the point.
SL: Right–I think this was her exact intent: to start all these stories since stories are endless.
AH: But it couldn’t end with the end of these stories because that means Zachary would still be dead and everyone would be really pissed–not that we all loved him anyway–
LR: Well, they show you the ending in the dream. You don’t see Zachary and Dorian reuniting, but we get a glimpse of it, just not where I wanted it to be.
BH: I was going to be really upset if they just let him die. I really thought the last 20 pages were going to be like, “That’s life!”
KV: I definitely did, too.
AH: The Fortune Teller knew.
KV: I think that was how it was supposed to end; there are always stories going on.
LR: I hate how they all just get to leave.
AH: Yeah.
LR: Like, they all walk out, but isn’t this supposed to be circular, so where are you going?
SL: But doesn’t that connect to what Kayla said, about taking and leaving something in the dollhouse? You leave the dollhouse, but the dollhouse doesn’t leave you.
KV: And they were all watching Kat as she walked into her story. So they all played a little bit of a role, even if she didn’t know what that was. The whole thing reminds me of the butterfly effect–all these people caused things to happen in Zachary’s life, which caused things to happen in Kat’s life since he is a part of it, so it did impact her in some ways.
BH: I never understood why the dollhouse got set on fire? What was the cause of that? I missed that.
KV: Wasn’t it Simon? When Simon came back in time?
LR: And knocks over a lantern.
AH: I feel like Allegra was connected to that? Because she didn’t want the story to progress.
LR: I thought it was completely accidental.
AH: The fire had something to do with separating Simon and Eleanor.
KV: At one point, when he’s talking about all the times he tried to come back and meet Eleanor, Simon mentioned causing “burns” which made me think he was involved.
LR: Yes, they say, “We used to have Acolytes that would snuff out all the candles” but they don’t have the Acolytes anymore and that room burned for a long time because they didn’t have the people to save it. It’s saying the fire can’t stop anything, like the dollhouse.
—
LR: I just think she was too big for her britches.
AH: Oh yeah, totally.
LR: It was a really beautiful concept, but it almost needed to be done in a movie? Where could you physically see it all to keep it straight?
KV: But wouldn’t that not do it justice since the whole point of the book is storytelling?
LR: Movies are storytelling!
SAW: It actually reminds me of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
AH: I was thinking too, if they were to ever make this a movie, how would it go? Because you wouldn’t be able to flip-flop nearly as much. I also like that we’re reading a book while Zachary’s reading a book, but we’re seeing what’s happening.
SL: YES!
AH: They would have to do like a miniseries.
LR: I figured that out wayyy too late.
—
AH: I just want to say, before I forget, the one little vignette, the one little story with the inn about the Moon and the Sun, was one of the best things I’ve ever read?
KV: I agree!
AH: It could stand alone as a short story; it was incredible. I loved it. And I almost wish we hadn’t gotten to see the innkeeper and the moon because it…not cheapened it, but I liked it better as its own thing.
KV: I agree–I wish Dorian had never found the inn. I liked it all as its own thing.
BH: But it was also his tattoo? Why was it his tattoo? Because it was in his book?
AH: I guess?
BH: Yeah, that was strange to me. I was surprised that the innkeeper and the Moon slept together. That was very surprising.
AH: I guess they were married after? But that doesn’t make sense.
BH: Also the rabbit was pretty strange.
AH: The rabbit as in Eleanor or the giant rabbit?
KV: I thought the rabbit was Eleanor.
BH: Oh shit! I didn’t even think about that! But the giant rabbit.
AH: The “celestial hare”…
SL: Well is it giant ‘cause it’s outside the dollhouse? We’re small pieces of story inside the dollhouse, and the rabbit is outside?
KV: It gave me really Alice In Wonderland vibes, with Eleanor opening the crumbling cottage doors and tumbling into the abyss.
AH: Ooh also, is it implied that she opened the same door as Simon? Even though his cottage had been destroyed?
SAW: I felt that way.
KV: Yes, yes. But obviously she opened it much later in time.
AH: That’s what I thought, but they never cleared up her accent?
KV: His mother’s cottage, right?
LR: Oh my gosh, I didn’t even get that!
*at this point, Lizzy leaves for dinner with her roomies*
SAW: Who is Mirabel? I kind of thought she was the Moon.
KV: She’s Fate!
BH: She’s Fate!
AH: I thought that it was pretty clear that she’s Fate.
SAW: I’m that type of person where, if the book doesn’t confirm it, I don’t take the obvious answer. Zachary kept saying he thought she was Fate so I didn’t think it was that easy.
AH: But she was with Time and the Moon was married to the Innkeeper.
BH: Is that the only time we see Moon? Or is the Moon also Kat?
AH: Ooh… I don’t know. But see, when Kayla said her favorite character was the Persian cat, I was thinking Kat is one of my favorites, and I was thinking are they the same? I read in the acknowledgments that Kat is named after one of the author’s friends, but, I don’t know, is there a connection between all the cats and the person Kat?
BH: I think she can be the new Moon because she had the Moon card from Zachary’s mom.
KV: I kind of thought she was going to be the new keeper. Like she was going down there to start as the new Keeper. It says she was going to the new Harbor and usually the first person in the Harbor is the Keeper.
AH: And it did say something…what was the message she got? It had “Time” in it, but it was capitalized.
KV: I can believe she’s the new Moon too, though. The thing with the Moon was that it only appears when she’s not in the sky, when the owl killed Fate, the Moon wasn’t there. So she couldn’t be Mirabel.
AH: Yes, you’re right, but they are connected; they are kind of like partners. And here’s the message: “For Kat, when the Time comes.” So maybe she is the new Keeper. But the Keeper was still there? Also, I didn’t like the Keeper…I kind of hated the Keeper, but I don’t know why.
KV: He was rude! Like that dude just fell down a rabbit hole, at least give him something to work with, bro.
AH: Yeah, he was annoying!
KV: With the pearls in his locs?
BH: It’s weird that his bed faced their life-sized portraits, too.
AH: *laughs* I know.
BH: That was a little creepy.
AH: I hated it when Mirabel made that comment to Zachary like, “I’ve spent a lot of time in that bed, you know.” I was like “Ew!” I did not like that.
BH: Yeah, not okay.
KV: But also, he died, right? At the very end, when he’s leaving the harbor, he’s burning his locs, right? If they’re starting a new harbor, they need a new Keeper.
BH: So are they all immortal now?
SAW: Yes. I say yes.
KV: Are Zachary and Dorian immortal?
BH: I’d say Zachary with his new heart, yes, but Dorian? I don’t know.
KV: Well Zachary’s now Fate, right? Cause he has Fate’s heart?
AH: Maybe? I don’t know. I think it might depend. If they stayed on the surface forever, they would be mortal, but if they returned to the Starless Sea, then maybe they’d be immortal again.
SAW: For a while I thought the Starless Sea was evil.
BH: Yes. It is.
AH: It’s not good.
SAW: Well it is and it isn't; it’s nothing. It can’t be evil or good, when it simply churns out stories. It just is.
KV: I was going to say, is it nothing or is it everything?
SAW: It’s both. So it can’t be one or another.
AH: Deep.
SAW: For a while, I thought, “Do they not want to find the Starless Sea? What if it's bad?”
SL: Isn’t that part of Allegra’s schtick? The Starless Sea being dangerous?
BH: So she wanted to keep people out because she thought it was dangerous? LIke emotionally dangerous?
KV: She wanted to keep her story going.
AH: Yeah, she didn’t want it all to disappear. She lived in the Harbor; she knew the Harbor would be destroyed or whatever.
KV: Once the story ended, which it did, and she didn’t stop it.
BH: So she was just trying to protect the Harbor, in a way?
SAW: Really was a noble quest.
KV: But, in a way, a selfish quest since she did it for herself.
SAW: Well I think that was another device for the author to illustrate the concept of different perspectives. Such as, one person’s noble quest is another person’s tragedy.
BH: She must have known that she would die when that happened. So maybe it was selfish in that way? In a book, she’d be immortal.
KV: What does everyone think all the objects represent? In the beginning she was very big on just the three objects: the sword, the bee, and the key. And then all of sudden there’s three more objects: the feather, the crown, the heart. What do they all represent? The first three represent the Guardians, the Keepers, and the Acolytes. The Bee is for the Acolytes; the key is for the Keepers; and the sword is for the Guardians. But then Zachary rolls all hearts, so what does that make for him?
SAW: Well, if we’re going off of Blaze’s theory that Zachary is actually the Owl King…
KV: But he has the key on his chest?
SAW: But he has the crown!
AH: But he rolls the hearts. I wonder if that just foreshadows him getting Fate’s heart? Or that he would find love or something like that… because Dorian rolled…*checks book* one of each. This is a bad English teacher thing to say, but maybe the dice didn’t actually mean anything. Like a red herring…
BH: Why drink the liquid?
AH: Maybe like a test of trust?
KV: Well, everyone’s tastes are different.
BH: So what’s the significance?
AH: Whether or not you do it, drink it, shows if you’re brave. Also the bees and honey in the kitchen can make anything you want, taste like anything you want, so probably just that, too.
BH: I liked the bees. I thought they were cute. I liked their weird dialogue.
KV: I know! Their run-on sentences! In my head, I was trying to read them while buzzing.
AH: Yeah, that was cute. But imagine being surrounded by huge bees…
KV: It said they were the size of cats! When he was in the story, the bees were the size of cats.
AH: Gross, gross.
SL: *At the same time as Aimée* Which is so cute.
KV: Their little antennae.
SL: Well if they’re fuzzy!
KV: Their stingers would be like *measures roughly 12 inches with her fingers* this big!
BH: It would be very scary.
SAW: Is that how we’re wrapping up this conversation?
KV: So there’s five books, right? Sweet Sorrows, Fortune and Fables, The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor, The Owl King, and The Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins.
AH: There might have been something else too… What about the loose paper stars from Eleanor?
SL: Oh my gosh, the stars! I loved the stars.
BH: Oh my gosh, why do you think he burned that star??? What was written on that star?
AH: *angrily shakes her book and growls* I wanted to know!
BH: I really want to know what that star said. I just thought it was insane to get a magical star from an owl and not read it.
KV: He didn’t want to know.
SAW: Who does that!?
KV: He didn’t want to know what was predetermined. He wanted to make his own Fate.
Our overall ranking of The Starless Sea:
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 :
🌟🌟🌟🌟 : Aimée, Kayla, Shelby (but add half a star for me)
🌟🌟🌟 : Lizzy, Sydney, Blaze (Shelby is guessing for Blaze since PST)
🌟🌟 :
🌟 :
Shit We’re Loving: PEOPLE
Our Pick: Characters from A Starless Sea
Kayla’s Pick: The Persian Cat
That motherfucker was loyal! He was always there. Even in the end, he was on the roof of the car. Or just all the cats. There’s so many cats! I appreciate the nod to the cats.
Sydney’s Pick: Kat
I have a love/hate relationship with how the book ended because I was upset they brought Kat’s story in so late. I was really interested in what was happening, but it was fumbled and nothing happened. I’d probably say that Kat is my favorite character; or that it was really interesting to see her perspective on things, and see how she was entering into the story. I just wish there was more to that.
Aimée’s Pick: The Fortune Teller
I liked Kat, too, but I would submit Zachary’s mom, Madame Love Rawlins, as my favorite. I wish we got more of her, but that also may be why I liked her since we only got these little bits. She just seemed very cool.
Shelby’s Pick: Pirate + Maid
I loved all the stories/characters that weren’t part of the main story–though, obviously part of the main story at the same time. Like I loved the pirate and the maid’s stories. But they’re supposed to be the Keeper and Mirabel, which is fine, but I loved them as these random stories inside, in the middle of another story.
Lizzy’s Pick: Dorian
I gotta pick Dorian!! After basically being raised by Allegra he realized he was on the wrong side and made an effort to change. Which side is right is totally subjective but for the sake of the book he made an effort to change and correct his behaviors. That takes a lot of guts to go against everything you know and for that reason I pick him!!
Blaze’s Pick: Zachary
My favorite character was Zachary because of his tenacity. There were so many situations in the book when I definitely would have given up or been too confused to move forward. It’s big main character energy because duh but not all main characters can be so likeable and clever while being so kept in the dark about other huge plot points. I liked his cautiousness while exploring the Harbor but he had a quiet bravery like when he went into the Collectors Club (both times) or started sailing the paper sea. I liked how he treated his friends, strangers, and foes. Overall I felt drawn to his story and loved the chapters focused on him.
Show Your Support: InsideOUT Writers
InsideOUT Writers is a nonprofit working to inspire writers who were formerly or are currently in juvenile incarceration. They use writing as a path to inspire and empower students to “emphasize healing”.
The Writing Program encourages students to problem solve, process emotions, and gain agency over their own stories. Writing is a lifesaving tool that can help people express words they might not be able to say yet and this program equips these early writers with the skills to be able to share their stories and find a new passion in writing. To date, 26,000 students have completed this program and continue on their writing journey.
Creative writing as a catalyst for personal transformation
In OTF fashion, we have donated $50 to InsideOUT Writers and encourage you to give what you can. Together, we can inspire a future generation of writers.
Daily Intention:
Today I choose…
Literary adventure.
Here’s some nifty buttons for you to press, enjoy: