This book is unashamed to be exactly what it portrays on the cover and I am HERE for it. There is nothing I didn’t love about this book: the characterThis book is unashamed to be exactly what it portrays on the cover and I am HERE for it. There is nothing I didn’t love about this book: the characters are diverse and imperfect, the themes are relevant and poignant, and the writing runs the gamut from brave to vulnerable and proud to weak.
I loved ferocious Addie with her love of dance and the love for her friends, and I sympathized with her struggles over her weight, her mom, and her financial situation. Her friends were all relatable and adorable and made me wish I had friends like them in school.
I have two grown kids, and positive body image is something I worked hard on instilling in them from day one. It’s something I wished every parent would do. While this book focuses on the female body and body image positivity of females (among other things), I really think that the message behind being unashamed of who you are and what you bring to the table as a human being are messages any teenager could benefit from. Not to mention, the discourse on double standards on uniforms and dress codes between males and females throughout the book is something everyone should be talking about and thinking about.
I highly recommend this book. By the end, you’ll be smiling and you’ll feel a sense of righteousness that will make you want to smash the patriarchy too....more
When I finished reading this book (which I tabbed more than I have ever tabbed any other book that wasn’t used for college in my entire life), I messaWhen I finished reading this book (which I tabbed more than I have ever tabbed any other book that wasn’t used for college in my entire life), I messaged my best friend in a flurry of praise and said this: “A lot Vonnegut, a little Pahalnuik, some Gabriel Garcia Marquez, some cool 4th wall breaking from the author put to great use. It's magical realism + dark satire + scathing sociopolitical commentary.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the masterpiece that is Noah Hawley’s “Anthem”. I’m not even sure there is a manner in which I could describe what this book is, what this book means, how this book affected me, how much I want to shove it in people’s faces and beg them to read it. How I want to tell them, “This is a book about a group of teenagers, but I wouldn’t put it in the hands of teenagers unless they asked, because who really needs to read it are people over the age of 35. As a matter of fact, I think this should be required reading for anyone old enough to run for President”.
“Anthem” is a scathing indictment of the adults of America. And it’s a very virulent entreaty for the readers of this book to listen to it and to take it seriously, even if its wit and whip-sharp humor come on a barbed tongue. Everything about this book is quintessentially American, but it’s been turned dark and cheap like America has been turned dark and cheap in the eyes of the book’s main characters. To this book’s main characters, the adults of America are the problem, and the youth are the solution. It’s an opinion I happen to share in real life, but in this book there is the open civil war between the right and the left (or, as Hawley puts it, the party of truth versus the party of truth), and the much more subversive civil war, which is the old against the young.
The youth is wasted on the young? Don’t tell Noah Hawley that.
This book is not a happy book. This book is tragic. This book is dark. This book is terrifying in some ways and exultant in others. This book is as profound as it is humble. I’ve never read anything like it before and I don’t know if I will again.
But I know I will never be able to read it again for the first time… I will never be able to recapture that feeling. And that feeling of reading a perfect book is something all readers long for. I cannot recommend this book enough....more
This is probably the best YA psychological thriller I’ve read, to date. More than that, it’s one of the best psychological thrillers meant for any ageThis is probably the best YA psychological thriller I’ve read, to date. More than that, it’s one of the best psychological thrillers meant for any age group I’ve ever read. It hooked me immediately. I was drawn so deep down into it hours passed without notice. My television went to sleep and I was none the wiser. I was honestly surprised when I realized I was approaching the turn (it’s a thriller–of course there’s a turn).
It’s not a perfect book, but I gave it five stars anyway because it was sharp, smart, and propulsive. This isn’t just your regular roller coaster: it’s a thrill ride. It simply doesn’t let up. It doesn’t slow down. Once the clock starts ticking it doesn’t stop: you are in it, you are invested, and you are committed to seeing this book through.
I have a personal problem in that I usually guess the whodunit in mysteries, suspense novels, and thrillers pretty early on. Only once in the last 6-9 months have I been surprised. This novel is no exception in that I guessed who was the culprit very early one. Usually this dampens my enjoyment of the novel and leads to me lowering my rating a star at the very least. In this case I couldn’t bring myself to care, because the book as a whole was just too dang good. The quality of the writing, the plotting, the dialogue, the characterizations, and the tight editing!
The way Diana Urban spins this book down is as unnerving as it was inevitable, and I was HERE for it. I just enjoyed this book from cover to cover. I will not stop recommending it, I can tell....more
I took a quick hop on over to Amazon to read the synopsis of this book and to see how the professional reviewers describe this book, and I saw words lI took a quick hop on over to Amazon to read the synopsis of this book and to see how the professional reviewers describe this book, and I saw words like, "chilling", and "fear".
I snorted. Because I didn't feel anything chilling or fearful in this book. I don't know if that speaks to just how screwed up my sense of humor is or what. Because I LOVED this effing book so much because I found it morbidly, perversely funny. This is snarky, dark, psychotic humor.
Belmont Academy is like its own ecosystem: it spawns, nurtures, encourages its inhabitants to go out into the wild to find mates and reproduce, and then to bring their offspring back to the mothership so the process can begin again. Sometimes, as with most of the teachers, going out far into the beyond to find the right mate and reproduce isn't necessary, so sticking close to the mothership and letting it take care of you as you take care of it in turn is for the best. And if new inhabitants are introduced to the ecosystem? Well, it upsets the balance. Just as with any malignancy, it takes time, but it does end up upsetting the balance and the ecosystem will eventually fail if no one takes notice and action in enough time.
Private schools are like gates communities: they don't keep problems out. They keep problems festering inside within the walls without public oversight to point out the issues that would be plain as day to outsiders. Of course, that's what parents and boards want when it comes to private schools: they don't want the government putting its fingers into their children's educational pies, but oversight is what keeps gardens from dying.
What I LOVE so much about this book is how EVERYONE acts like they're in high school. It's like, with them all being in this closed ecosystem, they can't help but be tainted with this same type of privilege that smacks of arrogance, snark, narcissism, and spite. It's what kept me laughing continuously throughout the book. This continuous notion of thinking they'll get away with things, of begging forgiveness instead of asking for permission, of being naive enough not to think of every possibility because OF COURSE you could never be caught or someone could outwit you.
And Teddy Crutcher is the absolute worst, being a downright malignant narcissist stuck right there in the middle of the sociopathy scale. He's not a complete sociopath, but he has a God Complex almost as bad as some surgeons you see on prime time crime procedurals. It's either all about him or it should be. If it's not about him then how can he make it about him? If he makes a mistake and the blame gets shifted to someone he feels is his responsibility, then someone else will just have to take the wrap--but it has to be someone he doesn't give a whit about and he thinks is an inconvenience to him or has done him wrong in some slight way before--because that mistake wasn't part of the plan and now that wrong has to be righted.
I'm not even mad the book ended pretty much how I thought it would or that the epilogue went pretty much how I thought it would. I'm not mad AT ALL. Because in the end this book had me laughing my morbid ass off and I wouldn't trade my black sense of humor for anything. ...more
Wow, talk about magical realism. Talk about taking the realities of Old Hollywood and turning it into an atmospheric, spooky tale of how getting onto Wow, talk about magical realism. Talk about taking the realities of Old Hollywood and turning it into an atmospheric, spooky tale of how getting onto the silver screen always involved a Faustian bargain with a studio head. Talk about reminding us of some of the issues facing women, minorities, and LGBTQIA+ people in Hollywood and how much worse they were then, how easily they were hidden, how much never came to light, and how we can compare all of that to the Hollywood of today.
This book is as entrancing as the magical and mystical men and women within its pages. It draws you in with lovely, atmospheric prose that paints a timely picture of the Los Angeles area in the era of silent films. Our main character (we don’t ever learn her birth name–the first “name” we know her by is the perfunctory acronym CK) lives with her parents and sister in a Chinese-heavy neighborhood at the bottom of the hills of Calabasas, which are among the Santa Monica Mountains, on the same valley floor as Hollywood itself. Today, the neighborhood where CK’s family would’ve lived is what we know as Tarzana and/or Encino (it’s kind of up in the air as to which one it is). (Incidental bit of real Hollywood trivia: In 1929, RKO bought land in Encino to build a movie studio.) The whole valley was still mostly agriculture in the 1920s and into the mid-1930s, and small businesses reigned. Vo does a great job of painting this picture of dusty streets, hot and dry heat from the constant sunshine, children running around not needing or wanting too much adult supervision and working for their family businesses, minorities and women not earning near enough money for the massive amount of work they do while men worked the fields. And, as ever with the Chinese, family was everything.
But for CK, there is the pull of the nickelodeon. The pull of the silver screen. The screen, the movies, and the stars intrigue her so much she’s willing to make magical deals just to be able to see one movie. But all that changes one day when she accidentally stumbles onto a movie shooting on location near her home. That day knocks the trajectory of her life in a completely different direction, one that leads her directly into the heart of Hollywood’s largest studio and scariest executive.
I loved the narrative manner this book is written in: a memoir, of sorts. It’s almost like an informal memoir not meant for anyone to really read one day. If one was going to write a memoir for public release of their great career as a movie star they wouldn’t have the guts to be as honest as Luli Wei (formerly CK) was in this book. Wouldn’t have been as brash or as honest. Memoirs are meant to be remembered by. This wasn’t meant for public consumption by Luli Wei–this memoir was meant for Luli Wei alone. Her life testimony, in hard copy, meant for her and her alone. (There’s a spoiler involved there, but I’m gonna hush.)
The prose is so lush and gothic, as if Hollywood was a secluded and isolated place only a select few entered and few ever truly left; or, if they did leave, they didn’t leave without leaving something of themselves behind. Imagine Hollywood days to be like a millinery, where everything runs around like a regular business, but people get blood drawn from being stuck with hat pins sometimes during the day, but at night that millinery has a secret opening behind a mirror in the changing room that leads to some sort of faerie realm, where everyone is both what they seem and something else entirely, too. Where human sacrifices are made, blood is spilled, spelled deals are inked, enchanted bargains are shook on, and it seems the night never ends until it needs to and everyone climbs back out through the mirror and back to the harsh reality of costumes that constrict your body, makeup that cakes your face, heels that pinch your toes and give you blisters, women who look at you with equal parts envy and venom, and men who look at you as either trash or property. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, someone always owns you, you always owe somebody something, and someone always owes you something. But as you get older, your social, economic, and political capital will go down. And, with that, so too your star will slowly but surely dim until it no longer shines in the Hollywood sky.
This is a book full of elegant sentences, barbed quotes, deeply flawed female characters, monstrous men, and yet still manages to convey a deep love for Old Hollywood and the sirens of the silver screen. I love how it brings all that love back to us readers while also reminding us that white people weren’t the only beautiful and incandescent stars in the sky back then.
Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Tordotcom for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
I’ve been looking forward to this book all year and it didn’t disappoint me one bit. It was amazing.
This story at times had a bit of the same feel ofI’ve been looking forward to this book all year and it didn’t disappoint me one bit. It was amazing.
This story at times had a bit of the same feel of Zoje Stage’s “Baby Teeth”, in the way you had a miscommunication between mom and daughter that didn’t stem from deliberate maliciousness but from misplaced emotions and intentions that ended up with both parties completely misunderstanding one another with disastrous results, but thankfully this book didn’t end up with me sick to my tummy. This book took that idea of miscommunication between mother and daughter and elevated it, intertwining it with little white lies and tall tales we tell to our family members to obfuscate the horrible truths from them in order to preserve their minds, and sometimes even our own. Sometimes we sacrifice our own sanity just so our loved ones can sleep safe for once. As a mom, I can own up to that one myself.
This book also makes clear in both word and deed that nothing truly stays buried forever. Sundial may be the title of the book, but it’s also the book’s mantra: everything comes full circle in time. It’s the nature of the beast. With the majority of the book being set in the Mojave Desert, the bleak climate and its eroded landscape also serves as a terrific atmospheric metaphor for how the land will both destroy and reveal secrets: from abandoned mine shafts to shifting sands to desperate predators, the desert both keeps and reveals secrets in tandem and you never know if ghosts will stay where you put them.
With a frighteningly interesting story, compelling characters, and chilling atmosphere, this book is completely worth the read and a page-turner for sure. I highly suggest you check it out.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
First of all: Ella Frank, how dare you! Second of all: Ella Frank, I adore you!
Now that I have that out of the way…
This is the first book in Ella FraFirst of all: Ella Frank, how dare you! Second of all: Ella Frank, I adore you!
Now that I have that out of the way…
This is the first book in Ella Frank’s long-awaited Chicago Heat series, which features characters introduced in Ella Frank’s Inside Affairs series and in Ella Frank and Brooke Blaine’s Dare to Try trilogy. In Wicked Heat we get deeper into Chicago, and it’s not exactly a pretty sight. We also get a grumpy fireman with self-worth issues and a sunshine personal assistant who doesn’t know his own value.
The angst is real. So is the chemistry.
I loved this book so much. I loved it more than I expected to, to be honest. I went in fully knowing this was part one of a two-part story. I went in knowing this story was unfinished and would likely end with a cliffhanger of some sort. Unlike some impatient and selfish readers, I recognize complete stories with good arcs sometimes take more than one book to tell to satisfaction. The characters speak to their authors sometimes and sometimes they take the authors places they didn’t initially plan on going. It happens. In my opinion, splitting this story into two books was a smart move on Frank’s part. Trying to either cram this story into one big book or trying to truncate it into a regular-size book would’ve ruined everything. Ryan and Jameson (our main characters) obviously needed time to develop as characters, then to come to tolerate each other before they could even begin to like each other. Jameson is a tough nut to crack, even if Ryan isn’t. I’m proud of Frank for staying true to her characterizations and making the choice to turn this story into two books.
This story is right in that sweet spot I’ve come to expect from Ella Frank: unexpectedly sweet in the right places, bittersweet in others, unabashedly earnest, and just the right amount of angst to make the heart twinge but not sob your eyes out. I can fully admit I teared up at the end of this book. I didn’t cry… but there was definitely some wetness gathering in the corners of my eyes.
I cannot wait for the second half of this story. ...more
I find myself thanking Sara Cate yet again for writing such an impeccable BDSM romance novel, and for also taking on this book and its dynamic. The woI find myself thanking Sara Cate yet again for writing such an impeccable BDSM romance novel, and for also taking on this book and its dynamic. The world of romance novels, especially when it comes to BDSM, has always heavily been skewed toward the male being the dominant partner within the dynamic so this book feels like inhaling a huge breath of fresh air. I also enjoy how this book came last in the series because it not only feels like the last link in a chain of kinks that grows progressively more intense throughout the series but also because it brings the cast of characters from the series full circle and closes the loop. Everything fully rounds out after having explored several kinks and dynamics over four books, and that’s something rare and special in the romance novel world.
I somehow knew Maggie’s book was going to involve being about her being a Domme and having kept everything about herself quiet and private, but I didn’t anticipate they whys and hows of who Maggie really was, and I found myself truly enjoying getting to know the previous enigma that was SPC’s quietest owner. I also really appreciated Maggie’s struggles with trying to fit in with her fellow co-owners of SPC and their significant others and how she found her way to stand up for herself at the same time as she found her strength and confidence in the bedroom.
I really and truly appreciated how much research, care, and sensitivity Sara Cate has put into these books, and that’s especially true in the case of this book where some humiliation, degradation, and sadism is put into play. A character actually uses their safe word in this book, and the issue is handled properly and with great care (yes, I would know from both the bottom and the top). This whole series could be used as a prime example of “How to Write Proper BDSM Romance and Everyone Should Throw 50 Shades in the Trash”.
As a side note: I’m glad they opened their new location in Phoenix, because every BDSM club that’s ever opened in Sacramento has eventually been shut down by either high rent prices or by the city. I should know. ...more
And Sara Cate hits it out of the ballpark yet again with the third installment in her Salacious Players Club series, a best friends-to-lovers polyamorAnd Sara Cate hits it out of the ballpark yet again with the third installment in her Salacious Players Club series, a best friends-to-lovers polyamorous romance between a married couple and their lothario best friend. Part of the book takes place during a road trip across the US, touring different clubs like the SPC, and then the rest takes place back in the city where the SPC books call home. This book features some of my favorite safety word-worthy things and is absolutely, positively sizzling hot. Believe me, there was some serious lip biting and wiggling going on.
As per usual with this series, Sara has done a great job at showing us the vulnerable and sometimes outright damaged side to the founding members of the SPC, writing these characters with a sense of compassion and understanding that some readers might be tempted to take for granted. I certainly don’t, though, because while not everyone who participates in the same lifestyle as the characters in these books do is vulnerable or damaged by their lives or upbringing, the fact remains there are some people who do find respite in the scene. And that’s okay.
Also, as with the other two books in the series, Sara has certainly done her due diligence when it comes to writing her safety word-worthy scenes. Her research is impeccable, but we all know that research is nothing if you can’t take that research and put it into prose people will want to read. Sara does that better than most romance writers out there. It’s hot and it’s accurate. I love it. And I love her for making that possible.
This book may be my favorite out of the series so far. That’s saying something, considering how much I’ve loved each entry before it.
Thanks to the author for the advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
It’s rare these days for me to find a contemporary romance rom com novel that I absolutely fall in love with and I feel deserves a five star rating. MIt’s rare these days for me to find a contemporary romance rom com novel that I absolutely fall in love with and I feel deserves a five star rating. Most of them have lost their shine, have either too many characters or horrible/unnecessary subplots, and are more predictable than what my dog is going to do when he spots a squirrel in the yard. But that wasn’t the case with this book. This book truly surprised me with its wit, build-up, steam, strong sense of identity, strong character voices, and especially its fragile heart.
Like the protagonist, Claire, I grew up in a large family with two siblings (I’m the oldest, though) and a ton of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Although I’m not of the same ethnicity and therefore cannot identify with the same cultural customs of Claire’s family, I sure know what it’s like to feel drowned out and overwhelmed by such a large family. And how sometimes it feels like your own family doesn’t truly know you or thinks they know what’s better for your life than you do. With huge families, conflicting ideologies are bound to come up every so often, and it can cause large rifts. I especially identified with how Claire felt stuck between her two sisters and also feeling like neither one of them truly understood her, because when you have siblings you’re close to like that, sometimes it just seems there’s no good solution for any issue where no one gets hurt.
But the romance! Oh, the romance. Sure, we have a meet-cute. Sure, we have a rather unlikely “I don’t know this is a huge celebrity billionaire” time period. Pssh. I don’t care. I don’t care one bit. The chemistry. The build-up. The wit. The banter. The passion. Their voices. The way they fit together and interact. Their strong feelings but Claire’s fragile heart and strong will. It was all so intoxicating. It all just drew me in more and more until I just couldn’t stop reading. I read it through dinner. I read it while petting my dog.
“Against the haystack a girl stands laughing at me, Cherries hung round her ears. Offers me her scarlet fruit: I will see If she has any tears.” - D. H. “Against the haystack a girl stands laughing at me, Cherries hung round her ears. Offers me her scarlet fruit: I will see If she has any tears.” - D. H. Lawrence
Sarai Walker says in the acknowledgements for “The Cherry Robbers” that the poem “Cherry Robbers” (from which this stanza comes from), was the main inspiration for what became the tale of the Chapel sisters and their untimely deaths. Other inspirations were, of course, Sarah Winchester (of the Winchester Rifle fortune and the now-infamous San Jose tourist attraction that used to be her home) and Georgia O-Keefe (famous artist known to most for painting portraits of flowers that also greatly resembled biological female genitalia).
To me, the book also has a sort of claustrophobic, humid feel that I associate with the movie “The Virgin Suicides”, a dreamy sense of females set apart in their own world I associate with the movie “Heavenly Creatures”, and, of course, (as even the books points out), that sense of intense sisterly push-and-pull dynamics that comes with having a gaggle of daughters that’s so familiar from “Pride and Prejudice”. There’s also intense themes running through the whole book about the loss of identity for the wife that comes with marriage and childbirth, the common phenomena (that persists to this day) of not listening to women when they speak their truths or sometimes even just when they speak, of men always thinking they know better than women, about women not feeling complete without marriage and children and the social pressure that tells them they are less without these things, and about how women who are in any way different will always be looked at askance by society. Some of the rest of it, well, it’s going to be left up to the reader to interpret. Violence, intercourse, innocence, and death. These four things are all intrinsically tied together in this novel, and how you interpret the connection will go a long way into how you view this whole novel and how it will feel to you at the end.
For me, this was a page-turner. I couldn’t put it down. It’s exactly the type of gothic, haunted house, psychological family drama I like to devour in one piece. I knew where it was going, but that was absolutely okay with me, because like the protagonist, I faced it with a sense of staid inevitability. As she told the story and expunged her demons, I cried for her and her sisters and her mother and for myself, in a way. If I had been alive in the 1950s I’d probably have been in a sanitarium. I’m not exactly what they call stable, and some of the prescriptions I take hadn’t even been invented back then.
This is the kind of magic I love to find in romantic comedies and in contemporary romance but have such a hard time finding. It’s hard to grab and keeThis is the kind of magic I love to find in romantic comedies and in contemporary romance but have such a hard time finding. It’s hard to grab and keep my interest through a full-length romance novel that’s not totally down with spice. I know not everyone’s like that, but I am. I’ve always liked more than a little spice in my romance, and I tend to get easily bored when romance novels go above 300 pages and there’s not plenty of spice involved. But this book is one of less than a handful I can think of in recent memory to be able to disarm, charm, and wreck me enough that its page count and amount of spice mattered not at all by the time the last page had passed. All that mattered was that the book was excellent in every way, and I enjoyed every page.
Thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
This is my idea of what’s just about a perfect, well-rounded young-adult fantasy novel. Not only is the subject matter pitched perfectly for the YA maThis is my idea of what’s just about a perfect, well-rounded young-adult fantasy novel. Not only is the subject matter pitched perfectly for the YA market, but the tone and character voices are spot-on as well. I found the whole book as heartbreaking as I did philosophical in its ethical and logical musings.
You can definitely see the influences of fantasy writers like C.S. Lewis and Phillip Pullman simultaneously in this work, which is an interesting juxtaposition. Vera, the female protagonist, strongly believes in God in a world where everyone has a magical aptitude, while she has many friends who are either ambivalent or even outright non-believers. There are also (as there is always) outliers in Vera’s high school who practice decentralized religions like witchcraft.
You can’t help but feel a little bit gutted yourself as Vera and her friends lose more and more memories (if one can call what is happening something as succinct as “memories”) as the book moves on. You feel the harsh sting and emptiness they feel at not knowing what’s gone, but knowing that something is gone just the same. The world just doesn’t feel the same anymore.
Ultimately, when you reach toward the end of the book, Vera’s normally endearing hobby of solving logic puzzles for fun turns into a moral and ethical quandary as she tries to figure out how to undo whatever has been done.
What I love about the end of this book is that it doesn’t tie everything up in a bow. Author Anna Priemaza could’ve gone that way: she could’ve chosen to go the happily-ever-after route and chosen to have us readers not taught a lesson. But I’m so glad she took on the challenge to actually put her foot down and lay out the implications for everyone regarding their morals, ethics, and the results of the demands and choices they made just before the end of the book. The book doesn’t end unhappily, but it doesn’t end on a sweet note, either. It’s like dark chocolate: deep, some sweetness, some happiness, but those bitter notes lingering on the back of your tongue.
I’d like to thank ABRAMS Kids and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this title. ...more
It’s no secret I love reverse harem romances. It’s no secret I love books that have themes involving sleep and/or dreams, either. I know my fascinatioIt’s no secret I love reverse harem romances. It’s no secret I love books that have themes involving sleep and/or dreams, either. I know my fascination with sleep and dreams originates from my own lifelong issues with sleep and how I am one to have an overabundance of nightmares and very few dreams (which probably speaks a lot to who I am as a person, right?), and that’s what drew me to “Reverie and Redemption”: reverse harem and dreams. Sounded like a match made in reading heaven to me.
And it was! I was captivated by the book from the first page. Reverie is the type of FMC I love: snarky, witty, and still a romantic at heart. She’s got (justifiable) walls built up a mile high, but she hasn’t gone completely cold yet. If Reverie had been written even a little bit weaker in personality or in humor, this book wouldn’t have worked for me. If she had come across as some vulnerable, beaten-down heroine, this would’ve fallen flat on its face. But because Reverie is more than willing to flip the middle finger at just about anyone than cower, it works. Her banter with law enforcement and quips when encountering certain fellow townspeople show off her sharp tongue and quick mind.
Kaydence Snow’s imagination and creativity was put to hard and good use in creating Reverie’s dreamscapes, too. Each one was memorable, fresh, and interesting to enter. Those dreamscapes were integral to the plot, and if they hadn’t been as vividly depicted in the manner Snow managed the book may have suffered much for it.
And the boys: Hollis, Oskar, and Sinan. I’m sure everyone has a favorite (I’m not telling). Each one was fully-profiled and spent a good amount of time on the page. They were, in turns, tragic and beautiful. Which is fitting for their roles in the book.
I wanted to pick a little bit on the magic system in the book, as I didn’t think it was as well-explained as it could’ve been, but I really don’t know if it could’ve been explained much better. The ending might have also been tied up a bit too neatly, but I don’t review and rate primarily on how well a book is written: I review and rate primarily on how good a book made me feel. And this book was a fantastic joy to read. And I’ll read it again. I suggest you read it too. ...more
This book has been one of my most anticipated releases of 2022 since it was announced last year, and it absolutely did not disappoint. I loved Laura SThis book has been one of my most anticipated releases of 2022 since it was announced last year, and it absolutely did not disappoint. I loved Laura Sebastian’s 2021 release, “Half Sick of Shadows”, and this book, the first in a trilogy, outshines even that excellent read.
I’m not a reviewer who rehashes synopsis or a huge amount of the plot you can read on any blurb you can easily find on any bookseller or review site. You can go ahead and read that for yourself if you’d like. What drew me to this book from the very start and made me pre-order it as soon as it was announced (this was even before I had an early opportunity to read it, thanks to NetGalley, Random House Children’s, and Delacorte Press) were certain keywords and phrases that always perk my ears and catch my eyes: seduction, conquest, grave mistake, no innocents, trained since birth, deception, violence, secret skill… There’s almost nothing I love more than poisonous pretty girls. It may explain why I have such a fondness for Bond girls, courtesans, female assassins, and historical figures like Lucrezia Borgia. The princesses in this series were born and raised to be weapons of their mother’s design, to be armed, deployed, and fired in order to destabilize and bring down foreign countries. These princesses are their mother’s own equivalent to the CIA, and I am here for it.
What makes this book even better, though, is how the triplet princesses’ tight-knit relationship (as well as their own hearts and minds) lead them in different directions, cause them to make different decisions, and forces them to become very different people altogether once they are away from their homeland and out from directly under their mother’s thumb. These sisters all find themselves thrust into situations they were not expecting, and all that’s left to do is to try and rely on one another and their own wits. Sometimes this works out in their favor. Other times? Well…
It’s an excellent book, and a very promising start to a new series. I’m beyond excited to see what happens in the next book. A careful warning: this book does end with a cliffhanger. I’m fully invested in seeing what comes next, and I know I’ll be ordering the next book as soon as it’s announced. I can’t wait. ...more
Being a huge fan of Dana Isaly’s writing, I had really high hopes for this book, especially as I watched her wage an internal war on social media, debBeing a huge fan of Dana Isaly’s writing, I had really high hopes for this book, especially as I watched her wage an internal war on social media, debating back and forth on how she was going to end this book. We readers (especially those of us who stalked her Instagram ruthlessly for updates), were like little dogs sniffing the kitchen floor after dinner had been cooked, picking up every tiny morsel of news that leaked out about this book and as buzz and hype built and built and built. I don’t know about anyone else, but when the opportunity to join the arc team came out I leapt at the opportunity and was giddy when I got one of the very, very limited amounts of slots, even though I had pre-ordered the book as soon as I could.
By the time of release, we knew some stuff: it was going to be dark… VERY dark. It was going to be violent. It wasn’t going to be for the faint-at-heart, and it wasn’t going to be a traditional romance. We didn’t know the main male character’s name (yet). The synopsis only says “Him”. And we knew the FMC’s name would be Lyra. We knew Him is a sociopath and a murderer. And we knew that, somehow, these two end up together in some kind of dark, erotic, twisted, violent way. (And if you follow Dana on Instagram you might even know a bit more, but I’m trying to stay true to the spoiler-free mantra and assume not everyone who reads this review may have seen every post Dana ever posted on Instagram about this book).
This is NOT a love story, and the first people to tell you that would be Him and Lyra. Him is a sociopath, so feelings of any kind aren’t things he can easily sort out if they aren’t hate or rage, and Lyra loathes the idea of love. Lyra, as she tries to get across in several scenes in the book to different individuals, is something that changes and fades and can die. Lyra wants OBSESSION: someone to be as wholly consumed by her as she is by them, to be each other’s air and breath and blood, to never be parted until death… and when one of them goes the other goes too. To her, obsession is something that can’t be questioned and can’t fade, wither, or die out.
What I absolutely love about this book is that it could have been so easy to make the relationship between Him and Lyra look similar to a Joker and Harley Quinn situation, since Lyra would do absolutely anything and everything to prove her devotion and loyalty to Him, but Isaly doesn’t go there and do that. Lyra is very clearly written as being a disturbed individual with deeply-rooted narcissistic traits. Sadly, I identified with the narcissistic traits of Lyra a little too well, because I have Borderline Personality Disorder and two of the many things having BPD causes is having evident narcissistic traits and an issue with being very self-referencing. Lyra thinks she’s the most interesting person to talk about… I know the feeling. I’m not a psychological professional (just, you know, been Bi-Polar since I was about 11 and had BPD since I was about 18 and had Anxiety since I was about 14 and I’m only 43 now, so whatevs), but I genuinely FELT for Lyra when she talked about love versus obsession, because I’ve never felt love like I thought love would be like or what I wanted love to feel like--not even in my marriage that lasted 18 years… and that was a happy marriage. But was it what I dreamed of being loved like? NO. Not at all. I didn’t want to be someone’s sun, moon, and stars like Lyra, but I longed for buckets and heaps of passion and romance and gestures and someone who could match me wit for wit and smart for smart. I didn’t get that, and I mourn that loss, because I know I’ll never let anyone in that far ever again.
But OBSESSION is the key theme of this book, and it does it so dang well. There are a few gorgeous passages in chapters 16 and 17 that give us some insight into how each character’s obsession with the other manifests itself, thanks to the dual, 1st person-POV narrative. As soon as these two characters fall into one another, it’s as if the outside world and all who inhabit it become the least important things to both our main characters, and at first they’re a little wary everything will fall apart or they’ll be caught, but as they become more and more enmeshed with one another what becomes more important to both Him and Lyra is making the most out of the time they have and not worrying about everything else. As far as they’re concerned, if the end comes, it comes.
Of course, I can’t spoil the end for you. But I can tell you that if you’re after a HEA… I wouldn’t read this book. But I wholly approved of the ending, in all ways. The last scenes were so beautiful I was breathless.
But, then again, this whole book left me breathless. The writing, the characters, the depth and breadth of creativity, the darkness, the mood of it, the vibe of it, how enjoyable it was to read despite the overall tone, the beauty of the entire book, the tragedy and beauty to be found in the themes, the spice (!!!!), and that breathtaking ending. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I read it yesterday morning.
Congratulations, Dana. For all the time and hard work and worrying… It's a masterpiece. ...more
Wow. I mean… wow. I didn’t know quite what to expect going into this book. Was it going to be more horror-like? More dystopian-like? More thriller-likWow. I mean… wow. I didn’t know quite what to expect going into this book. Was it going to be more horror-like? More dystopian-like? More thriller-like? I had to throw out all preconceived notions of what this book might be pretty quick in favor of what the book actually is, which is a hauntingly sad but somehow still beautiful tale of how all humans, no matter who they are, deserve to be deserved with at least basic human decency. It’s a book that’s horribly relevant to our current lives here in America and feels so close to something that could possibly happen to some of the most vulnerable people in our population I found myself getting goosebumps at the very thought of it. And, if you’re wondering: yes, I was pretty much bawling by the end.
I appreciate Nijkamp’s serious commitment to a diverse cast of characters in this book while simultaneously trying to not take away space for the voices that might better represent what life is like in juvenile detention for POC. Our three main characters are white, but one is mute and speaks their own form of sign language and the other is nonbinary. While the ratio of white to POC characters in the book is likely close to what might be representative of a juvenile detention center in America (with its issues concerning mass incarceration at every level of the penal system), Nijkamp is careful not to exploit her POC characters for their ethnic status, which could’ve been an easy and steep slope to stumble down as an excuse to flesh out her characters. Instead, Nijkamp took the time to flesh out her characters through their experiences, backgrounds, how they react to both the circumstances of their imprisonment and the central conflict of the book, and (in the cases of some) phone calls to their friends or relatives as the events of the book proceed.
The bleak, cold, desolate setting of this book only serves as an echo of how the characters must be feeling both physiologically and psychologically. The juvenile detention center is a place where one is literally locked down, but these people–not even adults yet–have been forgotten by everyone in the midst of a nation-wide lockdown. And just how far will human decency and the notion of charity extend when it seems like the world is ending? Who is willing to go the extra mile to help others no matter the cost and who will always help themselves first? Who will own up to their mistakes and make amends and who won’t admit when they were wrong? Who has the courage and ability to lead and who will trust them to?
As with most books that study the human condition and questions of morals and ethics, what you take away from it will be up to you as a reader. I came away with a profound feeling of grief, and I saw the philosophy behind it as being the kind of optimistic I can get behind with a dose of the pragmatic I tend to believe in. But I really think every reader will take away something different. It’s that kind of book. And I highly recommend it. ...more
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