as soon as I saw that there was a new english release by christelle dabos releasing this year I jumped at the chance for an ARC!!! her writing (along with hildegarde serle’s translation) is always such fun to read, I was a huge fan of the mirror visitor series and this one had such a different vibe which worked but also didn’t work for me 🫠 the premise of the book was interesting but as you read through it, everything kind of gets a bit lost pretty quick. the different POVs is always a favorite of mine but for ‘here, and only here’ it made the flow of the book itself go nowhere. I’m still excited to see what else christelle dabos releases in the future though!!

I loved this book. I couldn't put it down, and it has solidified Christelle Dabos as one of my forever writers. This. Was. EXCELLENT.

The entire time while I was reading it, I was thinking to myself: SEE SHE GETS IT!!!

Because middle school? WAS HELL. And all this ugliness and fear and anxiety and anger was inside me when I was 12 and just a little too weird. I saw myself in Iris so much, and it doesn't help that I grew up with an older sister who was good at everything too. But I also saw myself in the other characters and that's what made this book addicting and REAL. This book is relatable, and it takes a new approach to writing about mental health, peer acceptance, bullying. Everything that happens in this book, though on a lower scale, happens in real life, and it is such a relief to see someone writing about it.

In your teenage years, everything feels like the end of the world. And if a young reader who is struggling picks up this book and reads it and understands it all, I think it would be a great comfort to them. They may not feel so alone.

I really liked how this book was a collection of several stories within the same universe with all the characters being thrown in and haunted by this weird school where nothing makes sense and everyone is out to get one another. That's what I've always imagined school to be: a place where hundreds of children are just thrown into the wild and forced to figure out how to survive.

And I loved the inclusion of hormones and puberty in the story's themes. I feel like they get overlooked as well, especially by adults. I liked that there was some type of explanation of why elementary school the year before was perfect, and suddenly middle school was awful.

Overall, an excellent must read.

I greatly enjoy Christelle Dabos's writing. I will read anything she comes out with. She just GETS it.