The early reviews had me worried, but I liked this one. Alice and Peter were kind of insufferable, but I think that was kind of the point, and I enjoyed their journey and their growth throughout the book. It did feel a little bloated, and the book kind of kept ramming the same point over and over, so I do think the book could have used another edit - so I can’t quite give it 5 stars. But I appreciated what the book was saying about academia, being a woman in academia, and just being human. I don’t think it’s too “intellectual” or that someone needs to “prep” to read this - it’s just a fantasy/dark academia novel. There’s references to Dante, Greek Myths, and a bunch of paradoxes and proofs, but they’re explained well enough in the book (maybe over explained tbh). It did take me a while to figure out the time period and that this was set in the 80s though!