“I would rather lose this entire war than live without you, and if that means I have to prove myself over and over, then I'll do it. You gave me yo
“I would rather lose this entire war than live without you, and if that means I have to prove myself over and over, then I'll do it. You gave me your heart, and I'm keeping it.”
i promise you, no one is more surprised than me. the hype really is real and valid, but what made me fall in love was something i was not expecting to find within these pages. i will honestly say that the content of this book was probably more of a four star from me (still amazing obviously), but the reading experience for me was truly above any five stars i could possibly give this.
it has been so many years since the book community has had a book like this, where everyone is just vibrating with excitement. from the book being sold out everywhere, to all bookish platforms non-stop talking about it, to threads and threads of theorycrafting, to having the happiest of conversations with my friends, this book really is impossible to not know about if you’re in any part of bookish spaces. but why i think this book is so successful, and what surprised me the most, is the insane nostalgia this book was able to evoke from me, because fourth wing feels like all the fantasy series i grew up devouring and obsessing over.
i completely recognize this is not a perfect book, but rebecca yarros has created a feeling that i haven’t felt since vampire academy, twilight, hunger games, divergent, falling kingdoms. i feel like she personally handed me a big cup of my favorite nostalgia, that i almost forgot the taste of, and for that she really is going to get all the stars from me.
but the story of this book is good and solid, and the characters are truly amazing as well. violet is such an amazing main character, and i felt so much pride for her throughout this book. I love her sister, i love her bestie, i love all the dragons with my whole entire heart, and… xaden is six stars all on his own as well.
i will forever adore a boarding school setting and a main character who loves the stories she grew up reading. And this book really did have a few good twists that surprised me. the pacing was great and made me never want to put this book down. overall, i really just do not have a bad thing to say - this was a complete joy to read and will forever be a happy memory of the reading experience.
trigger + content warnings: war themes, mention of heart failure, loss of a parent in the past, loss of a loved one/friend, loss of an animal (dragon), death, murder, blood, violence, vomit, anxiety depiction, self sacrificing actions, and ableism (always in a negative light). i know i compared the feeling of this to many ya series i grew up loving, but this is a very adult book with very adult themes !!
>.> this book made me feel a way i have never felt reading any other book so...
i know it says a love story on the front, but this book is very much ab>.> this book made me feel a way i have never felt reading any other book so...
i know it says a love story on the front, but this book is very much about mental health + choosing to not be medicated for mental health conditions. it was a hard read for me, but a very impactful one. and olivie blake just is just such a talented author and the sentences she is able to string together, about really dark and hard to talk about things, really resonated with me in a way other words just never have before.
trigger + content warnings: loss of a loved one in past, addiction depiction (drugs + sex), depression, anxiety, inability to sleep, extreme codependency talk of arrest in past, overdose in past mention, unexpected pregnancy in past mention, a lot of talk of medication, blood imagery, abandonment, suicidal thoughts, disordered eating, some body image things, grey area cheating/emotional cheating, very intrusive thoughts, very manic thoughts, and just… a lot of discussion about mental health medications and choosing not to be medicated.
This fall i have been loving and adoring this author and all their stories (shout out to betty jo). But the reviews on this novella had me giggling buThis fall i have been loving and adoring this author and all their stories (shout out to betty jo). But the reviews on this novella had me giggling but unable to not read it. I also read this at a perfect time seasonally, because it is set during the night of a halloween party!
This isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you like it – i think you'll really like it. And i feel like this author is doing a lot of the romance genre and just expressing your desires without shame. While also always putting an emphasis on the importance of consent! And also always highlighting the power of reclaiming things and healing from things - the way you want to reclaim and heal, when you want to reclaim and heal.
I recommend reading goodreads reviews for this one, and if you’re curious, give it a try. I truly really loved it and was very into 90% of it, clowns included.
Also, dare I say.. Best bullying romances i’ve ever read? I think so.
Kinks/Fetishes within from the author: erotic humiliation, fearplay, painplay, knifeplay, consensual non-consent (CNC), orgasm denial, boot worship, spanking, crying, blowjobs, clowns, group sexual activities, spit, bondage, public play, bloodplay.
cw/tw i found while reading: Bullying, bullying in the past, blood depiction, drinking, brief mention of unwanted recording (not the mc doing it to the other mc),talk of trauma in the past, talk of child abuse in the past, clowns, and… i know the author said it above but like EXTREME edging/orgasm denial hahaha
“I’m frightened of this feeling that consumes me and promises to rip free of my body and set the entire palace ablaze. Of the way I want to ta
“I’m frightened of this feeling that consumes me and promises to rip free of my body and set the entire palace ablaze. Of the way I want to taste every part of her. Devour her whole.”
sleeping beauty, told from a fae villain's perspective, and completely for the sapphics. this was truly one of the best books i've read in a long while. i loved the writing, the setting, the descriptions, and obviously the characters. this was so well done and so impressively crafted. and i was absolutely living for the twists and turns. i don't necessarily know what i was expecting from this, but all i know is that i was delivered so much more that i could have ever dreamed to imagine! but that ending, whewwww! one of the best debuts, retellings, and just books i've ever read. i loved this completely and with my whole heart.
trigger and content warnings: a lot of blood imagery (human blood, animal blood, getting blood for spells), kidnapping, talk of child abandonment, talk of child experimentation in the past, loss of a loved one, anxiety depiction, captivity, mention of slavery, drug use, brief mention of suicide, torture, gore, violence, murder, death. (also themes of homophobia and misogyny - always in a negative light)
"And there is nothing more dangerous than love, is there? People fight for it. They die for it. They commit acts of war and treason and all manner of sin in its name."
Whew, what a rollercoaster again! Kingdom of the Cursed picks up immediately after the events of Kingdom of the Wicked, and with Emilia trying to pick up the falling pieces of her life. Her main priority is to still avenge her sister and discover who was killing witches in her Italian town, but this time she is looking for clues in the land of actual heck, where she is promised to one of the seven demon rulers, and not the one she already has feelings for. Yet, Wrath escorts her back to his personal heck kingdom, and Emilia soon realizes there is much more she has to be in search of if she ever really wants to live a normal life again.
I feel like talking about my thoughts on this series is just so difficult. Let me start out by saying that this was the most easily consumable book I’ve read all year, and there wasn’t a moment I wasn’t thinking about it while not reading. The atmosphere, setting, and entire vibe is perfect, especially for the autumn time! The main character and her quests for vengeance and for her own discovery really is phenomenal. The writing is lush and descriptive and feels like its own sort of magical teleportation. And the story itself feels enthralling at every turn, and plot points are constantly being set up to leave the reader anticipating that next page, while also begging for the next book.
"When the demon responsible for Vittoria’s death finally felt the flames of my fury, I’d hopefully have burned this House of Sin to ash."
But there was just a horrible chapter that really dampened my entire reading experience and it really breaks my heart because this is one of those situations where I truly believe if publishing houses would just hire beta readers who review critically, this could have been such an easy chapter to fix. I actually believe that if chapter 17 did not happen, this could have been a five star book for me and you could have seen me holding it up as a new profile picture in 2022. But that scene just 1.) made me wanna throw up and 2.) made it so hard to root for the romance after, even though the author constantly tries to make an excuse for the behavior, but it honestly just makes it feel even worse. Also, I wouldn't make excuses for anything that happened in that chapter, but once I finished the book I realized that the “training session” was so unnecessary, at least in this book, and again it just ruined my reading enjoyment.
For the sake of the rest of this review, I’m just going to ignore this chapter. But in my review of Kingdom of the Wicked, I said how this series is the first series in so many years to remind me of those fantasy series I read when I was younger and truly could not put the books down, and I would look forward to their next installments being released months and months in advance, while trying to devour to story when it hit my kindle at midnight!
And this story was extra reminiscent of those feelings because this second book takes a very large jump in the adult or new adult fantasy genre. This book is very steamy, and Emilia and Wrath have very sexy thoughts on the brain 24/7. This author also makes full use of this series being about demons inspired off the seven deadly sins, and this story uses very public displays to showcase this. (I do scream at Emilia not knowing about oral sex though, especially when she claims to have read such naughty romance books in her past though!)
Overall, again, this is just a hard one for me to review and rate. I will for sure read book three and see how it all wraps up, because I am actually unhingedly invested in everything, especially with how this second book closes! I really loved all the new developments with Emilia’s powers and with all the witches and the history of witches, actually. I loved a lot of the side characters we were introduced to too, and maybe one demon prince will actually pull a Rhysand, which would be insane but I’d really welcome it at this point. I also want to see all of the different lands and castles of hell, too, because so far every exploration has felt magical and so exciting! I do apologize for this review being all over the place; middle books are always a bit more difficult for me to review, especially ones where I am trying to pretend an entire chapter didn’t happen. I’m going to be very curious what everyone thinks of this book once it releases!
"Not all stories end happily, Emilia"
Trigger + Content Warnings: a lot of blood descriptions + depictions, grief, gore, violence, mention of loss of a loved one, brief mention of the topic of rape, drugging, a lot of sexual themes and scenes, and a full warning that chapter 17 has very questionable physical consent involving mind control powers using magical compulsion - truly full dubcon vibes but sex does not ultimately happen, but it is just a very uncomfortable scene that actually made me nauseous, so please use caution while reading.
the way i really thought this was the last book of the series lmaooooo! but so much just.... didn't happen after that amazing start and before that really powerful (& omg all the twists) ending. but i had a good time for the most part while reading this, even with so many lulls throughout. but i am begging for kieran to just get his own book.
content and trigger warnings: blood depiction, captivity, violence, gore, talk of death of a child/murder, talk of children being hurt, talk of loss of a loved one in the past, snakes/ophidiophobia, and war themes.
i enjoyed book one so much more, sadly ;___; but i still had such a fun time reading! and maybe some polyamory rep in the n1.) From Blood and Ash ★★★★
i enjoyed book one so much more, sadly ;___; but i still had such a fun time reading! and maybe some polyamory rep in the next book, or maybe i'm truly just a clown all around <3
"From this moment until the last moment, I am yours."
At the end of 2020, I kept seeing this book all over book social media an
"From this moment until the last moment, I am yours."
At the end of 2020, I kept seeing this book all over book social media and it was being loved by such a vast range of bookish friends. And then it was the goodreads choice awards 2020 best romance winner! Up until this point, I had never really read anything by Jennifer L. Armentrout, but my curiosity was so very peaked! Then once I entered 2021, I still felt like I could not escape the hype of this series! Finally, I read a few reviews by friends and found out that this was a fantasy series,, with a paranormal romance, and that information, in addition to it feeling like higher powers were at work to get me to read this, made me finally give it a try. And one I read that first chapter I knew I couldn’t put this down.
From Blood and Ash introduces us to Poppy, who is a chosen maiden for the gods. She is not meant to be touched, to be looked at, or to experience anything that is not considered god-like. She is quickly approaching her nineteenth birthday and soon she will leave to the capitol and have her Ascension, where she will prove that she is worthy of the gods and will help protect her entire kingdom from a curse carried by those who are unworthy of the gods. Yet, there is another kingdom living in hiding, who will do anything to make sure Poppy isn’t able to make her Ascension and change anything. (I am trying to be kind of vague here, because I truly did not know before going in, or expect in my wildest dreams, the paranormal aspects of this book, and I believe it did heighten my reading experience!)
But Poppy has so many secrets, including her own kind of powers that are manifesting stronger and stronger to help read and sooth people’s emotions. And there is also the secret of what happened to Poppy’s family, that left her and her brother the only ones alive to carry out the will of the gods, while Poppy is also forced to carry so many scars, both physical and emotional, from that night.. And there are secrets in the palace where she is currently living with the Duke and Duchess and a lot of abuse going on behind closed doors that are only meant to protect her. But the weight of grief and expectations are getting too heavy for Poppy to bear, so at the start of this first book she decides to sneak away from the palace for one night where she can maybe experience things without being expected to be a pure vessel for only the god’s consumption. And when Poppy ends up at a tavern, and in a private room, with Hawke, a very young but very skilled guard, she gets a taste of what she has been missing and what she may want for herself, unapologetically.
"You're a perfectly normal girl. What is expected of you is what's bad"
I do think grief and abuse are a constant theme in this story, and we get to see how those two words can present themselves in so many different ways. Different fear tactics are constantly in play, both in this kingdom and in Poppy’s life, to keep people in check and to keep them abiding to a corrupt system. Serving evil can easily be masked by saying it is serving the gods. Ultimately, this is a swoon-worthy and angst-inducing paranormal romance story, but there are a few layers here that I hope people are looking and listening very closely to while reading!
"You deserve so much more than what awaits you"
This book has really good discussions about what it means to be a young person discovering your wants and needs, while also slowly growing into the person you want to be and how hard that can be to separate from expectations already placed on you. This book is very sex positive, and consent is always at the forefront. I am also just going to type this with my full chest and then pretend I didn’t but, for me and my body and my personal experiences, I thought that the building of orgasms (and just some body reactions in general) in this book were very realistic and very well done. But anyways, I loved seeing Poppy reclaim so many things, and this romance is the first one in what felt like years that I am trying completely head of heels in love with and rooting for. But, please allow me this one small mini drag for those of you who have read this book:
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Overall, this book truly blew me and my expectations away and it was very much the perfect book for the perfect time in my reading life. I laughed, I smiled, I swooned, I cried, I gasped, this book truly made me feel so much and it was just an amazing journey throughout. I feel like the twists were very well done and laid, I feel like the romance was filled with yearning and angst on every page, and I was constantly left wanting more and more. And the last line of this book? Yeah, I will be picking up A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire immediately. This was a joy to read from cover to cover.
Content and Trigger Warnings: death, gore, talk of loss of a child, talk of kidnapping, talk of death of children, mention of loss of a child in past, loss of a loved one, mention of suicide, assault, physical abuse, blood depictions, mention of rape, anxiety depictions, self-harm to get blood, and general war themes.
"...like some kind of sacrament that I had forgotten to take."
a queer asian-american main characte[image] ARC provided by Tor - thank you so much!
"...like some kind of sacrament that I had forgotten to take."
a queer asian-american main character great gatsby? i knew i needed this in my life. i will be honest, i have never been the biggest fan of the great gatsby, so i do believe this impacted my enjoyment a little bit, because this book does very much still hold true to the original work! but i still thought this was a beautiful reimaging, with such lush prose and one liners, that left my heart beating so very quickly so many times. the magic was also so hauntingly perfect and i know it's something i'm going to think about constantly for quite some time. the themes of identity within the story were also very important, and how no matter how much you feel like you fit in, people will always remind you that you will never truly be one of them. and the themes of identify outside the story, and how we deserve to carve out our own spaces, we deserve to be the main protagonists of beloved classics and modern day lit, and our voices deserve to not only be told, but to be amplified really was everything to me as a queer asian reader.
i can't wait to read more by this author, and i'm very thankful that the chosen and the beautiful is a book that exists.
content and trigger warnings: a lot of talk of drinking, talk of war, talk of loss of loved ones, death, murder, racism, microaggressions, a lot of cheating, abuse / domestic abuse, mention of suicide, mention of slavery, mention of blood.
ARC provided by Wednesday Books ✨ My Review for SADIE
"Having a sister, Mom says, is a place only the two of them will shar
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ARC provided by Wednesday Books ✨ My Review for SADIE
"Having a sister, Mom says, is a place only the two of them will share, made of secrets they never have to say aloud—but if they did, it would be a language only the two of them could speak."
Courtney Summers is an author who has always meant a lot to me and her stories always impact me more than I have words to write in a review. I truly believe no other author writes about the sibling experience and feelings that I personally have better than her, even though I always am left feeling grateful and thankful that I am not a main protagonist in her stories. And The Project is no different; it is hard hitting, filled with twists and turns that make you constantly question what is real, it is lyrically written, emotional, and fully a heart-wrenching story about the things you are willing to do for someone you unconditionally love, even when you feel isolated and confused and so very scared. Oh, and it’s about cults and how they prey on people who are isolated and confused and so very scared, too.
Lo was only thirteen-years-old she was in a car accident that left her parents dead and with everyone believing that she wouldn’t be alive much longer. Bea was only nineteen-years-old when she watched her world fall apart when she walked into the hospital to maybe say goodbye to her little sister. Desperate for hope that Bea wouldn’t lose Lo too, she went looking for something to believe in inside the hospital, and found Lev Warren. And when Lo ends up making a huge leap to recovery that very night, Bea realizes there is nothing she wouldn’t pay to ensure her sister will live.
"Bea closes her eyes. She wants Lo to understand that night in the hospital, what was supposed to be Lo’s last night on earth. How it brought Bea to her knees and how it split her heart in half and how its breaking called forth a miracle."
Six years later, Lo is alone again and hasn’t spoken to Bea in many years. She feels hurt and abandoned and just misses her sister so much, and she directs all that pain in to the Unity Project, that Lev Warren runs and where Bea is a member. And then one morning, Lo’s world gets touched again by the Unity Project when she witnesses someone take their own life, but before they do they recognize her because of Bea. And this death touches even closer when it impacts her job, and she gets the opportunity to finally do a story for the magazine she is working for. And she decides she will finally contact her sister again and make her see the corruptness of the Unity Project, and she won’t let anyone stop her, especially Lev Warren.
"All I wanted was to claw my way back to my sister, but the whole time she was surrounded by new love, she buried her old family and built a new one on top of its bones."
This story is mostly told in Lo’s perspective, but we get little glimpses of Bea’s throughout and every time I could feel my stomach and heart just drop lower and lower. The things that both of these sisters were willing to do for one another renders me utterly speechless. Truly, I feel like no one can write vulnerability and sacrifice, unconditional sibling love, earth-shattering desperation, and pure heartbreaking hope like Courtney Summers. All while also making her characters feel so real, and their journeys feel like you are right beside them experiencing everything alongside them. Yet, also make you question everything at every twist and turn.
Lev is written in a way that is scarier than any monster in any fantasy book, because monsters like him are living and dwelling and thriving in our world today. They prey upon people who are isolated from their families, people from lower incomes, people who are unable to get help from broken American health care systems, people who very rarely will realize that what they are experiencing is manipulation, gaslighting, and abuse. And if they are able to realize it, they are unable to seek help because men like Lev are gaining more and more power, more and more followers, and more and more resources to keep you trapped every single day. This is a hard book, and it is so very dark at times. The range in which Lev is able to manipulate people into believing his cult is a community is actually harrowing. And seeing Lev lead people into believing that he is a vessel for God, chosen to do His wants, is truly some of the scariest literature I’ve ever read and it really will leave me feeling haunted forever.
"The hard part is this: the small broken girl inside me clawing against the wall I’ve built to keep us separated. The one who still wants so much for certain things, despite all she knows."
Overall, I really did love this and I very much believe Courtney Summers was born to write and impact so many people with their stories. Her way of crafting and telling stories leaves me in awe, and I’m always completely blown away reading all her last lines. The reason I am giving it four stars is because I didn’t love the ending. I mean, this wouldn’t be a Courtney Summers’ book without a bit of a mysterious ending, but this one was just a little too mysterious for me and left the book at a little bit of a weird note when you look back at everything that was endured. But the last line? Perfection. Speechless. Masterpiece. Everything. Courtney Summers and her stories truly are something special and I’ll carry them within my heart always, despite how heavy they are.
Content and Trigger Warnings: abandonment, loss of loved ones, sleep paralysis, grief, depression, panic attacks, hospitalization, talk of death of child in past, physical abuse, torture, emotional abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, blood depiction, complications with childbirth, murder, child abuse, captivity, and cults. Please use caution and make sure you are in the right head space for this book, because a lot of these triggers are themes that are brought up a lot and unapologetically. Stay safe, friends!
i read this in a day and it was heartbreakingly perfect. mary hk choi really is an all time favorite auEmergency Contact ★★★★★ Permanent Record ★★★★★
i read this in a day and it was heartbreakingly perfect. mary hk choi really is an all time favorite author and no one is writing contemporaries like her. the asian-american experience, the asian-american catholic experience, having your elders be immigrants and knowing how much they gave up for you because they believed they were going to giving you a better life (and feeling the weight of those expectations), seeing your elders get older and feeling so very hopeless, mental health stigmas everywhere (but especially in asian communities), disordered eating and the grip it can have on every aspect of your life, sibling rivalry and devotion, the health insurance options in the us - reading this book makes me feel seen in ways that felt like the most vulnerable secrets being whispered in my ear, and i am so very thankful.
this book also made me crave halo halo for a week because of a cute ube joke, lmao :]
trigger and content warnings: very graphic and descriptive extreme disordered eating, throwing up, cancer / sickness of a loved one, talk of miscarriages in the past, talk of periods and irregularity, talk of hysterectomies, depression, excessive drinking, panic attacks, anxiety depiction, brief mention of domestic abuse, racism, bullying, harassment, blood depictions, mention of cheating, toxic living situations, abusive parenting, grief depiction - this book can be very heavy at times, especially with disordered eating, so please use caution and be gentle with yourself if that is something that could hurt you. (view spoiler)[there is a line about eating so fast that it doesn't count that truly fucked me up and made me set this book down and just reflect and cry - everyone has different experiences - but this book was the most accurate depiction that i have ever personally read. (hide spoiler)]
I loved so much about this book: the discussion on immigration, an asian-american main character, healthy talks of power imbalances, breaking stigmas I loved so much about this book: the discussion on immigration, an asian-american main character, healthy talks of power imbalances, breaking stigmas of poverty, the guy love interest having an eating disorder, and more!
But I just felt like… the love interest was hard to root for. I constantly kept asking myself “should I be feeling empathy?” and I don’t think that’s a very good sign, especially when such a baseline of the story is built off power dynamics.
Also, this entire story was just so unrealistic. Like, I truly did enjoy so many aspects, but I could never be fully immersed because I was just unable to suspend my disbelief in such a way every other chapter (but especially by the end)!
I still think this was a good read, just made a tad bit dated as well, but I am excited to carry on with book two for the book club! And again, there was a lot of good within these pages, I just felt unable to connect for many of them!
Content and Trigger Warnings for disordered eating, racism (challenged), talk of being cheating on in the past, loss of a loved one in the past, drug use, and heart attacks.
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