I guess my mental picture of Fell was not so much smaller as poorer. Like the apt buildings made sense to me, and the laundromats, and the antique stores because the northeast US is crawling with old people looking to sell their old stuff, but for "cafes" the only mental image that worked was if I replaced "sells cute vegan baked goods, has wifi" with "sells Latin American and/or diner food, doesn't have wifi". If that makes sense.

My experience is antique stores and apt buildings, yes, book stores not so much for the kind of economically depressed, physically isolated small town she's describing. That being said, I'm trying to get past it, because I do like the author's style overall.

I really hate the whole curse euphemism thing. I hope that if they ever do a movie version of The Inheritance Games, they get rid of that part.

I would say the Lilith's Brood trilogy is pretty character focused. I haven't read all of Nancy Kress's Beggars series, but what I read of it was pretty character focused as well.