THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT by Melissa Grey

Rating: C+
Synopsis:
For readers of Cassandra Clare's City of Bones and Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone, The Girl at Midnight is the story of a modern girl caught in an ancient war.

Beneath the streets of New York City live the Avicen, an ancient race of people with feathers for hair and magic running through their veins. Age-old enchantments keep them hidden from humans. All but one. Echo is a runaway pickpocket who survives by selling stolen treasures on the black market, and the Avicen are the only family she's ever known.

Echo is clever and daring, and at times she can be brash, but above all else she's fiercely loyal. So when a centuries-old war crests on the borders of her home, she decides it's time to act.

Legend has it that there is a way to end the conflict once and for all: find the Firebird, a mythical entity believed to possess power the likes of which the world has never seen. It will be no easy task, but if life as a thief has taught Echo anything, it's how to hunt down what she wants . . . and how to take it.

But some jobs aren't as straightforward as they seem. And this one might just set the world on fire. 

My thoughts on the book:
The last half of The Girl at Midnight was enthralling, and I couldn't put the book down. However, the first half fell flat for me. The writing was subpar, and the characters were dull. Luckily, as things moved along, the writing became much better. I also began to care about some of the characters. While this wasn't one of my favorite books, I will continue the series because I want to know what happens next. 

Echo was a pretty boring character for the first half of the book. She got more intriguing as things went on, but she never fully grabbed me. Rowan was super boring. I liked Caius quite a bit, and he was more interesting than the others. Ivy, Jasper, and Dorian were a bit one dimensional, but they served their purpose as filler characters. 

The writing for the first half of the book was incredibly stunted, for lack of a better term. It kind of resembled, "This is Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." The author seemed to struggle with the third person a bit at first, but she found her footing around the halfway point, and she had some really poignant lines after that. The ending bugged me. It's not so much as a cliffhanger as the book just kind of stopped randomly in the middle of stuff. However, the plot was unique enough that I kept reading, and I didn't hate the book. I liked it enough to continue the series. The last half really kept me interested. 

Overall, I'd recommend checking this book out from the library first. It's not the best book I've read this year, but it's decent. 

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