Thanks to Netgalley and Peachtree Teen for the eARC. I received a copy for free in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way impacted my rating.

Lila (pronounced Lee-la) has been sent away to live with her aunt after falling on stage during a ballet performance and committing an act that she believes was truly evil. Luna Island, where Aunt Laina lives, is a world of pastel Pinterest boards, French pastries, and.... A cult?

I'm going to be honest here. I love to read reviews. I love to read spoilers too, if you can believe it. RUIN the experience for me, I don't care! I will still read it and try to form my own opinions. In this case, I do have to say I'm feeling kinship with the consensus here. This book is... an experience.
Let's build up to it, shall we?

Characters:
Lila - I remember being a sad, sad teenager. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and sometimes I imagined pressure from places that it wasn't. But Lila's just.... so dramatic about it. All the time. Constantly. It was not... fun to read. Your prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed yet, babe. Take a breath. Give it five to seven years. Then we can circle back.
I think my biggest issue with Lila is how often we were told she was convinced she was bad, she was worthless, etc. But her actions... did not show us that? I feel like so much of her personality was held up in her thoughts and her actions were just kind of..... Look at pretty dress, eat some cake, do a ballet dance.
Also, she was so INSANELY chill with NOT ONLY learning about a new religion, joining in said religious practices, learning that their religion IS NOT allegorical/theoretical, but genuinely literal and active in their day-to-day lives, and THEN finding out

she has special moon magic

?! I would not be that calm. But she doesn't even take five pages to process, she just mows through with it.

Laina - Idk man, I got nothing. She was like.... nothing on the page. I'm not even positive why she had a falling out with her siblings at this point, and I just read 200 pages of this book today.

Roisin - Someone said Roisin should have been the love interest and frankly I agree. She really didn't get to do anything besides be The Side Character™ but at least she had, like, a reasonable character arc.

Damien - This boy gave us NOTHING ✨🥰 He said, "I have no personality, but I sure love YOU, Lila!"

The Setting:
I'm about to make a bold statement.
I think this book would have been better if it was high fantasy, rather than urban.

Because, like, why DOES it have to be modern? So you could show off ballet terms? This island exists out of time, completely removed from an American setting. Everyone and everything is insular on this island. They have their own separatist religion (getting to that soon). They rarely have outsiders.
This would also allow for the lightning fast character acceptance of her changing circumstances, but still leaving space for her to be special or gifted.
Making this a contemporary fantasy pulled the story down.

The ~~✨Aesthetic✨~~:
I'm not making this my final point only because I feel like others have had some truly stellar commentary about it. There's a lot of genuinely amazing commentary on the rise of "personal brand" aesthetics and the influence it has over how people, especially women, curate themselves and their personality on the Internet.

This story was very obviously created aesthetics up. It comes from mood boards and pretty pictures; the plot was not always the driving force. There was so much focus on the descriptions of dresses and food and drinks and smells that the town, the characters, the religion became secondary points.
It's a cozy, tasty, pastel piece of cardboard. I did not feel transported, I did not feel engrossed, because the bulk of the story was hazy and insubstantial. Every aspect of this felt like a performance for the benefit of the audience, not as a means to tell a story or to set a scene any broader than the inside of a dress shop.

I come from both a writing and a film background. I can appreciate engaging with media for the aesthetics, to a point. But when writing a novel, it's plot, then set dressing. Otherwise, it's like hiring your cinematographer before you write the script. It just doesn't work that way.

The Religion/Mythology:
You can take a look at my reading updates or ask my friend Sam how I felt about this. Because boy. Boy, was I mad.

DON'T GIVE US A RELIGION AND THEN NOT ACTUALLY MAKE IT A RELIGION.
Basically, Luna is a "cult" in the original Greek sense of the word. This is a closed-off religion, endemic to this one island. But the divine antagonist is.... The Devil? Like, that original guy? The one is all those Christian books? THAT GUY?
Let's lay out the facts: 1. Christianity exists in this universe. Lila name drops God and talks about church.
2. Luna is a moon goddess.
3. Luna had angels?
4. Luna had angels that fell because of Lucifer.
5. These angels are not only definitely real, but they interact on a regular basis with the humans on this island.
WHY are they not being overrun by Christians getting excited about their religious tenants being proven? Doesn't this prove the existence of God? Where is the Pope?
What are the practices of this cult? What is their worship like? And clearly people who live here leave and move (Lila's background story), so you mean to tell me NONE of them ever let it slip to someone who was religious?

This was the most afterthought of afterthoughts and it drove me up a wall the entire time I was reading. I love creating fantastical religions, I like reading about religion, I dabble in comparative religion. This is my thing. And it was the most lack-luster aspect of the story.

Final Thoughts:
I said it before and I'll say it again - reading this book was certainly an experience. I just think the process behind this one went a little wonky. The story this book and its synopsis are selling and the story they're telling are kind of two different animals. Unfortunately, the story I was told didn't really work for me.

Content Warnings