The Almosts

This book was promoted to me as “Buffy meets Saints Row” and it definitely lives up to that. This is set in an established universe but you don't need to have read any of the other books to understand it, as the protagonist is inducted into the magical world in the book so a lot of the stuff about the world and how magic works and such is explained.

The heists are all fast-paced and fun, and I love how they're written out like a movie montage. The magical system is neat and feels original, and Kara's power is interesting. The protagonist is vibrant and has a lot of depth but I don't really feel like I've gotten to know a lot about the other characters yet.

One of the reasons I didn't rate this higher are that the characters make a LOT of references, which can be fun but if you don't get them they aren't really explained and some of them seem to be necessary to understanding the context of certain scenes. There's also one scene of sexual assault that I felt was really poorly handled and kind of unnecessary.

Still, it was definitely a good start to the series and I'm looking forward to the next book.