My favorite book of the year, this novel by the author of The Martian is an absolute delight. Science, mystery, character—it all comes together in a wonderful listen that I would recommend to literally anyone who likes stories.

This is the perfect audiobook. I had trouble getting into this novel in print and didn’t actually come to love it until I listened to the audiobook. The book has extremely slow pacing but amazing ambience and language—and hearing it read to me with a storybook quality was haunting and intoxicating.

If there are any of you out there who like my books but haven’t for some reason read or listened to V. E. Schwab, then I think you’ll love this one. The world-building is very much the way I like it—lots of nooks and crannies to explore, with intriguing effects on character and narrative. It’s a masterful novel and highly recommended to people who like Sanderson novels. She and I write in many similar ways.