The first several chapters of this book were fascinating to me. The whole idea of animal-people as part of Lipan folklore was magical and mesmerizing. I liked Nina, too, though her story never felt fully fleshed out.
I started to get confused when Oli (the cotton-mouth) made a new friend who was a hawk and the author kept referring to the hawk with plural pronouns. At first, I thought she was referring to many hawks, but I went on Goodreads for clarification and realized that this hawk, Brightest, was non-binary. I mean, I understand that many people are experiencing very real confusion about their gender identity and it's a hot issue right now and probably very hard for people, but Brightest is a hawk. And for a hawk to be confused about its gender and think it's neither a male or a female, but actually a "they" and for Oli to just automatically know that without needing to ask or have Brightest explain it to him, felt wrong. It did. I understand that saying that is unpopular, but this is me being honest. And since I'm the only person who reads this blog, I'm going to be honest. I would never recommend this book to my kids. Brightest wasn't the only one, either. There were two non-binary characters, two asexual characters and a lesbian coyote. ::sigh::
The story itself had a little bit of an anti-climactic climax when Oli and Nina finally meet on Earth and everything seemed to work out perfectly in the end.
