I would like to acknowledge how insane I was for waiting so long to read this book. I was among the first people on the request list, but I ended up sending it back and re-adding my name to the list because I was in the middle of another book and didn’t think I would have time to read it then. Well… Even though this book was rather large (599 pages), I ended up reading it in ONE WEEK! Considering that I didn’t have any days off from work and/or caring for my kids, that’s crazy! But, this book is crazy good, so I went to extremes to stay up late reading. I’m talking, get up and walk around when I feel my eyelids start to droop or purposely play Candy Crush before sitting down to read because I know the glow from electronics makes it harder for me to fall asleep. Yeah. I’m dedicated like that! 😉
You may be asking, “But, what is so awesome about this book?” For starters, it’s not just one book. I can’t even begin to explain how awesome it was that Scott Westerfeld wrote two books in one and it totally worked. (The two stories are told in alternating chapters.) Why are there two books in one? Because one of the books is about a girl named Darcy Patel, who gets her first book published just after high school, and the other book IS Darcy’s book. It was so cool to read all about Darcy’s struggles with getting the book and characters right and then to read the book itself . (John Green should totally take notes, because it still slays me that I can’t read An Imperial Affliction!) This book is both contemporary realistic and paranormal fantasy, since it has one book of each. The only “problem” with this book, in my opinion, is that it left me with a bunch of questions. Like, will there be a sequel? And were the YA authors in Darcy’s world based on real authors that Scott Westerfeld knows? I’m hoping the answers to both are yes — and that I will, someday, find out whether my guesses about those YA authors were correct.