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Unfortunately, this just wasn't good.

The story meandered to fill time; it tempted me with ogre lore only to conclude that nope, this entire species of thinking speaking people is irredeemably evil except this one girl who isn't even really an ogre in the first place; it concludes with the message that even if you think you don't want to get married you really do; and in shoving in backstory for characters from Ella Enchanted, it made the world seem small.

The appearance of Peter, Ella's father, early in the book was fine. It's the latter half that annoys me. Peter proposes to Eleanor, Lucinda shows up and Mandy urges Eleanor to accept the proposal lest she get cursed, and they're then given one of Lucinda's many dubious blessings. After which Peter drops the facade of loving Eleanor and goes all scheming villain in her presence. Boring tbh? Why did Ella's jerkass dad need to be even more of a one-dimensional villain? Why wouldn't Mandy have told Ella the circumstances of the proposal -- instead telling her that Eleanor always loved Peter? Who asked for this? In the end everyone finds out Peter's a scumbag but he gets off scot-free because we can't change the timeline (if we could, Evie and Eleanor might as well have gotten together).

Speaking of Evie, what even is the moral of her story? Don't turn down the boy you're not in love with, because actually yes you are? It's just so bad. I hate it.

I'm not convinced by the insistence that the universe can't be toroidal? The argument is that it would then be a Klein bottle and signs would change as objects traveled around the circumference, but what is there in the geometry that would force non-orientability? Maybe I skimmed over it by mistake.

Valeria achieved blorbo status in an impressively short amount of time.

Was this entire trilogy just building up to a "go tell it on the mountain" reference?

What if the bomb that killed the camera technicians is this same bomb but its arrow of time was fucked up? I mean probably not but if I had a nickel for every bomb in this book I'd have two nickels, which...