I made the mistakes of reading the 1-star reviews before I wrote this one. Which sort of made me sick. Everyone is complaining that it’s “too juvenile” like this is middle-grade? I don’t know what you thought this was going to be, but the writing is juvenile because it’s for literal children?

A few people said this is a book for people who don’t like reading books, which I found genuinely insulting. As someone who writes books and reads hundreds of books a year, I absolutely loved this book.

I’m more into middle grade and YA, I like easy stories because my life is already so friggin complicated, I don’t want books I read to make me feel bad. This book was genuinely sweet and precious. And yeah, it was low key creepy.

I will agree that not much ghost-type stuff happened in the beginning, but people complaining about this is probably one of my biggest pet peeves. In first books, there is always a portion of the book that needs to be set aside for world building and character development. When people complain about a book being “slow” or “a nothing book” when in reality the writer is trying to set up the entire story I literally want to shake them.

Because if the author DIDN’T set up the story with world building and character development, everybody would’ve complained the story had no depth or development.

Anyways, rants aside.

This is my favorite book V.E Schwab has ever written. I love Cassidy. I love Jacob. I love Lara. Was I rubbed the wrong way in the beginning when Cassidy trashed the popular girls? Yeah. I don’t think that’s something that needs to be said in modern books.

And I know the V.E Schwab tends to do this a lot. With Cassidy being “not like other girls” and her best friend being a male ghost. But I feel like she sort of remedied that later in introducing Lara and cultivating a friendship between her and Cassidy.

I really, genuinely love Cassidy’s character and the spooky ghost stories told in the book. I loved the veil and how Lara literally is like “Don’t do the thing” and IMMEDIATELY after that Cassidy ends up doing the thing.

I like how the book resolution didn’t seem too easy even though it wasn’t all that hard. I hate when stuff takes to long to resolve. Honestly this book was so special to me. It was a sweet, spooky, nice read and I cannot wait to read the second one in the series.

Which is a HUGE deal for me because I am TRASH at reading second books. If I ever complete a series you best believe it was FANTASTIC (to me).

Overall rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(5/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

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More about City of Ghosts

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Schwab comes a sweeping, spooky, evocative adventure, perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

Ever since Cass almost drowned (okay, she did drown, but she doesn’t like to think about it), she can pull back the Veil that separates the living from the dead . . . and enter the world of spirits. Her best friend is even a ghost.

So things are already pretty strange. But they’re about to get much stranger.

When Cass’s parents start hosting a TV show about the world’s most haunted places, the family heads off to Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, graveyards, castles, and secret passageways teem with restless phantoms. And when Cass meets a girl who shares her “gift,” she realizes how much she still has to learn about the Veil — and herself.

And she’ll have to learn fast. The city of ghosts is more dangerous than she ever imagined.

Get your copy here on Amazon.