I really, really enjoyed the premise and characters of this book. Knowing me, it’s no surprise that I enjoyed a dark academia school setting and having a found family type relationship with the characters was just the cherry on top. If this was centered around students of the arts like painting or drawing instead of actors, this book would’ve pretty much seemed like it was made in a lab to give me dopamine. But nevermind that. I really enjoyed the Shakespeare part of this book and I honestly think it relit a passion or interest in Shakespeare for me. It may have felt a little pretentious for the characters to be constantly quoting Shakespeare, but I personally didn’t mind it and felt like it was possible since they’re such fanatics. But, I’m sure that if I was as much of a Shakespeare fan as they are, all of the references would’ve had a deeper impact on my interpretation of the story. Immediately, I was very into the characters and feel that the way they interact was so fun and interesting. I have to admit, some of the female characters (Wren especially is a victim of this) were not as fleshed out as they could’ve been and overall not all of the characters were very complex. But, I believe that this is because they were based of the stereotype of their acting specialty (ie. Meredith’s damsel in distress or Wren’s innocent child-like figure) which can both take away and add to the story. If I had to choose one thing that I’d want to change about the story, it would be to give Richard more of a motive to become abusive because it felt really sudden and we didn’t get much of an explanation for it. It also seemed that they were all very close, even to Richard, so it felt a little weird that they were willing to let him die so easily. But, that’s part of the drama, I guess. I felt at times that this story was a bit predictable but it didn’t really bother me because I was still into the plot and where it would lead. (thank you, Joliver)