Here's to interlibrary loans

You know those times when it seems like everyone with a book/-ish blog is reading and loving the same book? I never get that book until several months after the initial hype has passed.

This time, it's A Curse Dark as Gold - although, okay, I got it a bit quicker by sending for it from the Sacramento library system. If you are like me and don't have a library that gets new books on the shelf a week after they're released - I swear there can be a four-month gap between my library ordering a book and it becoming available - or a sweet hookup that gets you Most Wanted ARCs in enviable numbers...I offer my shoutout to you here.

Anyways, thoughts and impressions thus far:

- Charlotte's foppish uncle is annoying and worrying me. He and Charlotte remind me of Cezar and Jena from Wildwood Dancing. Does evil lurk under his obnoxious exterior? I think maybe so.

- I like Rosie very much. Also Harte.

- I'm expecting that all their efforts to keep the mill afloat will fail so that they can be desperate enough for their run-in with the Rumpelstiltskin character, whenever he shows up. But the book's still sucking me into believing and hoping that maybe, maybe all their hard work will come to fruition...

- Mr. Woodstone. Why is everything important about him so nice and likeable? I'm scared, and kind of bracing myself for it all turning out to be a mindscrew. Protect me, pessimism!