Is good solid book, with characters that aren’t idiots and are all playing to further their own agendas while still making nice in public. There is magic and violence and road trip to begin with, but once you get to the city it becomes far more political and tense as everyone realizes what a powder keg they are sitting on.

I especially liked that there is no wish fulfillment in this book. There is no Manly Bigpants/Mary Sue character here. The lead protagonist is a girl who thinks she’s an expert manipulator but is still weak for abs or a friendly face (and the other characters know and comment on this teenager thinking she’s such hot shit), and the male dreamboat is a religious zealot out of time who is borderline abusive and controlling, and again the book knows this.

Harry Potter this is not, and even the male dreamboat has a good reason for looking the way he does: he died and a woman who knew what she liked made him a new body and put his soul into it.