This is such a cute cozy story. I loved the narrators Elyse Dinh and Emily Woo Zeller. Loved the FMC’s Brenda and Kat. The worldbuilding and writing were fun.

That was a ton of fun! The characters were great, especially for YA. Nobody was hopeless on their own but teamwork was what was needed on their own, and the teenaged angst was used believably. I could see Fantasy LA easily, and Reality LA sounded like the city I remember. The pop culture references were fun, though I may have missed what kind of mass media the magic world shared. (I mean, they must have had live theater if nothing else. But they clearly had the ability to broadcast voices, if not change stations. And I don't remember hearing about novels? But maybe I missed it somehow. I must have missed it.)

I have two Obnoxious History Nerd observations: am kind of curious if a decrease in electricity really would save the environment of LA, since I'm not sure water use for household and farming settings for such a large population wouldn't do damage, but having all that green definately did good things for the visual differences between the two worlds. I LOVE the idea of cars not really being a thing, but guess there was some magic way of dealing with horse dung which made the roads less shitty (I couldn't resist) than they were before cars took off.

This was a case of “not for me”. The two POV characters are distinct and fleshed out, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It felt too info-dumpy. Brenda often seemed ridiculously immature, which didn’t make sense, given her overall characterization, ambition and role in her extra curriculars. I know capturing an authentic teen voice is tricky, but most of the books I read are YA and this stood out to me as unbalanced.
Both girls dwelled on interiority in a way I personally don’t enjoy, and the pacing was lagging, so I eventually DNF’d.
The narrators were fun and engaging, speaking at the perfect speed, but in Brenda’s case the voice felt too childish.

Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Publishing for the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.