The Sunlight Pilgrims

The characters are interesting, but could use more fleshing out. There's a lot of great stuff here, Dylan's descriptions of Babylon, Stella's thoughts on her body, but the book lacks any sort of momentum, and feels like an unfinished first draft. The moment you get the antagonist in the room with the rest of the characters the book ends. And I don't even know if I would call Stella's dad a real antagonist, except that Dylan and Stella don't like him. The extremely cold weather, which should overshadow the book with a sense of doom, feels more like a non-issue. The main characters don't seem to struggle with it any more than a normal winter. They drink gin and go sledding, with the occasional mention on the news about the Thames freezing and snow in Morocco.

Stella is the most interesting character, her feelings about her body and fears about puberty forcing her into an unfamiliar body were very moving.