This was a very lovely, magical story. I enjoyed the blend of chinese mythology with influences from Romeo & Juliet and the way the story was told through so many different lenses. I’ll be on the lookout for more books from this author because I did enjoy the writing style and the overall themes. I also liked both Luna and Hunter as protagonists and I found their struggles to be very relatable, especially if I think back to teenage me. However, I felt that the book tried to be and do too many things at once. There were at least six different storylines happening at the same time throughout the book; the love story, the natural phenomena, Hunter’s family story, Luna’s family story, the Huang-Plot, etc etc. Some of them later converged/intertwined but I still feel like some things were not properly resolved in the end. The book also felt like it was missing a proper arc of suspense. Yes, the story was very nice and cute, but it just went on without any clear ups or downs in tension. The ending got a little bit more intense but that was it. At some point, I checked how many pages I had left and was surprised there were only 50 or so pages because it felt like we were still in the middle of the rising half of the tension. But, to end on a positive note, I did enjoy the ending. It was bittersweet but that was to be expected when something is marketed as “reimagining of Romeo and Juliet”.

the story was enjoyable and i loved the modern twist emily x. r. pan put on the tale of chang'e and houyi (which was also a tale i never read before). but what was going on with the writing style? after loving the lush writing in "the astonishing color of after", i was expecting something similar here, but overall, the prose was bland in my opinion. the extremely short chapters (like 2-4 pages) and the constant switch of perspectives made it feel very choppy and i found it extremely hard to get into a reading flow.