I saw a comparison of this to Ninth House and A Deadly Education. This book isn’t anywhere even near those. To its credit, it has a super creative magic system, and a very well done suffocating atmosphere (that was on purpose right?). However it’s filled with obstinate, annoying characters who refuse to communicate clearly with each other, an overused trope to artificially insert drama and tension that really wasn’t necessary; the book was about a couple hundred pages much too long. Between the moon phase based magic and the dark rituals and the connection to a fictional story within the story, this had a lot going for it; unfortunately the writing failed to do anything interesting or good with those and drowns you in tropey drama instead.