See this map? The entirety of the first book only concerns the 4 cities connected by the walled roads. The walled roads were conceived of and built by Alexa's mentor Thomas (who seemingly dies of old age at the beginning of the book). He founded Lunenburg (North of Bridewell) when he was 33 as a safe place to live in the dark and scary woods. When people started believing him that it was safe, they followed him and settled there to the point that it became overcrowded. To relieve overcrowding, he proposed building walled roads into the woods and creating towns at the ends of them.

People only live in these cities. There are some other people living in the other cities marked on the map, but if there isn't a city, nobody lives there. (Technically people do live in the wastes, but they're portrayed as roving bands of scavengers, not isolated homesteads.) There is no farmland mentioned, no trade, heck this whole place is an island. And 4 of the 8 places where people actually live are at the most 40 years old.

Where are the people *coming* from? How is this place feeding itself? How do they have so many books to fill multiple libraries? There’s one river and it doesn’t even go near people! Where are they getting water?!

[one thing I did remember about this series, without needing a reminder, was that when the protagonist learns who her biological father is, she’s like “oh so that’s why I never had a crush on [Boy]: because he was my brother!”…….😬

Patrick, my guy, you know kids my age were reading Flowers in the Attic, right? Like in the 1980s?]

Also, (this is the unfortunate implications part) because the people of Lunenburg are afraid of the monsters in the woods, the road is built by convicts Thomas "borrows" from Ainsworth. On the condition that once the roads are done, they are returned to prison in Ainsworth. How does this society have *that* many convicts?!?! There is no logical answer that isn’t troubling.

There's more stuff that's nonsensical, but the point is none of this matters. It's still a well-written middle grade book. At the end of the day, the most important part of being a writer is the writing.

Some pointers:

If you notice a worldbuilding hole, trying to address it with a hasty explanation

"You can sleep in our guest room"

*shit they live in the woods that no one should live in, why would they have a guest room? um um*

"that's weird, but our house has a guest room too. Because dad didn’t build the house, it was like that when we moved in."

Reader: ...wait, what?!

might be worse than just ignoring it or deleting the part that triggers the cognitive dissonance.

"I can pull out some blankets, but I'm afraid you'll have to sleep on the floor"

Expectations differ for different age groups. Sometimes that's limiting (can't have sex in a middle grade book), sometimes that's liberating (no I don't need to explain how the Government works. I thought it was cool so there it is.)