After Lia making a dramatic statement only to completely undermine it a second later, we carry on with our complete lack of drama. Because we are 100 pages into this beast, that’s clearly far too soon for an actual plot to emerge.

The next day is Monday, our first day of classes, but Grace is still adjusting to the altitude and feeling real sick so she takes the day off. While she and Macy are still talking about her lack of class for the day, Flint comes by to….invite Grace to a snowball fight.

This will proceed to be the only major plot point for the next 100 pages. A snowball fight.

Macy is freaking out because Flint saw her in her skimpy pajamas, then gets flustered over being invited to a snowball fight. It’s…a big deal? For some reason? Macy acts cagey because she can’t admit that everyone is magical, so they have a kind of double-conversation where Macy is talking about the different types of creatures and their dynamics but Grace thinks she’s talking about cliques and taking it way too far. That part would be rather clever if only 1) there was a reason for this masquerade and 2) it’s about something other than a snowball fight.

Macy goes to class and after resting a bit more Grace decides to go for a walk.

I start with the wool tights [Macy] got me and one of my tank tops, then add a layer of long underwear – pants and shirt. After the underwear, I slip into fleece pants in hot pink (of course) and a fleece jacket in grey. […] hat, scarf, gloves, and two pairs of socks. Finally, I finish with the down-filled hooded parka my uncle got me and the pair of snow boots rated for Denali that are in the bottom of my closet.

…it’s November. She’s repeatedly given the temperature as being 10 degrees Fahrenheit. (-12 Celsius) I know she’s from San Diego and thus unaccustomed to cold, but I’m from Texas and I have experience having thin blood and going straight into snow. 10 is cold, but it’s not as cold as this author thinks it is. Grace would be sweating up a storm in that outfit, especially if she’s going to be moving around a lot.

Which is fine, Grace is an idiot teenager with no knowledge, except for the part where this works. She recognizes that overdressing is a danger because sweat can make you colder when you stop moving, but then that never happens. The whole thing reads like the author pulled some info off a website and then called it a day, and zero snowbirds were involved in the editing process to catch this.

Also ‘rated for Denali’ is nonsense, that’s not how cold ratings work, YES I’M BEING PETTY LET ME HAVE THIS.

Grace walks around outside, describing things to us and exploring. There’s a weird tree. Presumably it has relevance later on, but in this book it’s just a page of a tree looking kind of fucked up and that’s it.

There’s a bunch of little cottage buildings that house classrooms and Grace walks around those for a while. They’re all named various native words.

I’ll google the word “chinook” later. I know it means “wind” in at least one native Alaskan language, but it will be fun to figure out which one.

Throughout the book, Grace has a mild interest in native Alaska languages that amounts to nothing. Maybe it does in later books, but in this one, nope. However, ‘chinook’ does not mean ‘wind.’ It has a lot of meanings, none of which are ‘wind.’ There is such a thing as a ‘Chinook wind’ which refers specifically to a warm, wet wind that can show up even winter, but that usage was coined by (I think, my googling wasn’t clear) French settlers. There are Chinookan peoples, there are Chinookan languages, and neither of those two groups are from Alaska. They’re from the Oregon/Washington state-ish area.

So basically, every single part of the above quote is just flatly wrong.

The really pathetic research that went into this book makes me extra sad considering the author that’s suing Wolff is from Alaska and I still really want to read her version. I wonder what kind of Alaska stuff is in it.

While out walking, she sees Lia and Jaxon having an animated argument.

The entire next chapter is Grace waffling about whether to leave or not while watching these two have an argument. She’s not close enough to hear them, so we have no idea what about. Riveting stuff.

They see Grace, she gets flustered and makes and excuse to leave, but Jaxon follows her. There’s some teasing, he tells her to avoid Flint but won’t say why, it’s the first conversation all over again. Although at least a little less weird.

“What were you and Lia fighting about?”

[…] he says, “My brother” […]

It’s not the answer I was expecting, but as the very few pieces I have start fitting themselves together in my head, my heart plummets. “Was…was Hudson your brother?”

Even though we have entirely too many words in this book, we have very few spare characters, so of course the character that was only mentioned once in passing is also Jaxon’s brother. Why would there be anyone else around? After all, this isn’t a full and complete world, there’s only the things that happen directly in front of Grace.

Talking about his dead brother makes Jaxon get broody again and he stalks off. Belatedly, Grace realizes that Jaxon and Lia weren’t wearing jackets. At this point I’m not even suspicious about that; an Alaskan resident probably things 10 is downright balmy.