Gemma and Raven are amazing characters, fully fleshed out and lovable. I liked how Gemma grew and learned that only because someone comes from a certain family, it doesn’t mean that he is less worthy or not a good friend.
As the story unravels, you learn that Toby lives in the Tree but his family was forced out of the Upper Branches to the bleak Lower Branches because his dad was a scientist who refused to reveal a secret that could destroy the lives of them all.
“And that’s how I learned the language of the cows. Those afternoons had no yesterday and no tomorrow---only me and the cows and the cat, who crouched on a fence post and squinted in the sunlight.”
“She returns home and learns that Jasmine was a true friend to her after all. She forgives both Jasmine and Will. In the end, she confronts her parents’ about the first Will.”
“The King sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.”
“Joe learns, too, that a ‘unicorn can’t grow up in Fashion Street but boys have to’, as he watches a new pattern assemble when Kandinsky achieves his steam presser, when Schmule bests the Python and when he loses the little unicorn.”