It really didn't stand out to me. It was a dull read and not worth my time to be honest. It would have been useful to know that this book was to go with another story by Cook.

I tried multiple times to get into this story and just never found it to be enough. The writing was dense, the plot didn't make very much sense, and I wish this had been marketed as a backstory for the author's other works instead of being a standalone novel.

I thought the synopsis sounded really interesting so I decided to give it a try. But this story felt very dry - more of a detailed list and less of a story. It was a list of what these 2 kids did and how it all went down and never seemed to pull me in and get me interested. It also felt too short, not really giving me a full story.

I also found some of the writing to be choppy. In many spots, I wanted to mark sentences that either felt like they didn't make sense or were worded in ways that didn't make complete sense. All in all, I thought the idea sounded great but somehow this story just didn't work for me.

While the blurb was promising, the story falls short. There is a lot of missing information that seems vital to understanding this story, like why were Karim and Salima chosen? Why would Cooch do this? And at the end we're told there are other books, however they're adult books. Which is fine but why is only Bairdston for kids, and wouldn't it be a confusing story to children as well who don't know background info? I really appreciated the main characters being POC however, and think the story could have been stronger. Racism and bullying are very important topics but it was tedious to read this book. Please try again author.
I received a copy from Netgalley for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley!