I wanted to love this book. I really did...but there was something that kept me from falling in love. Maybe someday I'll try again and who knows, it might become my next favourite read.

I see what they were trying to do, I admire the attempt, and I wish they'd gone through several more rounds of editing before publication.

It just wasn't what I wanted, and it didn't meet the expectations it gave me. I can't quite put my finger on it either. Sometimes I was super invested in characters, and then quickly not. Sometimes I was super invested in plot and pacing, and then bloop, bored. Sometimes I was in love with the craft of the writing, and then I was like "what even is this sentence?". It had very high points, but also painfully muddled lows. Not awful, not great, just needed a bit more thought. I think it's a book that would lure in my readers but then have them leaving this as dnf.

There are Marmite books that some people love and others hate. Every Mountain Made Low had a strange Marmitey effect upon me as some of the time I loved it and some of the time I hated it.

It certainly fascinated me as I tried to understand the strange woman in her different world with her mysterious struggles. I imagine other readers could come away with very different visions as the writing has a rather intimate style, almost drawing the ideas out of the reader's own experience rather than imposing as in traditional story-telling.

An extremely ambitious book that falls far short of the mark. I appreciated this attempt to craft what
is essentially the a story of a very unlikely heroine trapped in a bad place, trying to transcend her situation and fight for truth. Unfortunately, neither the characters, the setting, the plot, nor the writing style worked for me.

I could go into detail, but I'll stop here, because I don't have anything else positive to say.

This failed to grab - although I found the premise interesting - but I found our main character to be a bit too fragmented to hook on to. In these sort-of-shifted realities one needs a very strong magnet at the center of the story in order to let the other stuff just float around and assemble as the author sees fit (China Mieville is especially good at this). Loxley, for me, just didn't provide that center. I'll revisit White's work, however, because I do think the writing style is intriguing.

Fascinating novel. The writing style is unusual and the narrator's viewpoint was unusual and intriguing. I liked the world White built and the way the novel unfolded was exciting.

I gave this book 3.5 stars! The idea behind this novel is SUCH a cool concept and is my type of story. The summary was so intriguing and I was so happy to find the story just as engaging. This was a really fun and interesting read and I really liked the writing style. Thoroughly entertaining and I flew through this!

We discussed this on our book podcast Brave New Words.