I was contacted by Stories Untold on behalf of the author with a request that I read and review this book. I was happy to do so. However, the book was not for me and I did not finish it.

I think there are aspects of the world and the story that middle school readers would enjoy. It’s very whimsical. Unfortunately, this whole book is just a Harry Potter rip-off, right down to the gratuitous fatphobia. I also don’t think I’ve encountered this many shades of purple in any other book, and that’s not a good thing.

Overall, I try not to be too hard on indie books, but this one would have really benefitted from better editing and a little more sensitivity.

I really enjoyed this book! It felt like a good introduction to the series, and the story was interesting. Nancy wasn’t the most compelling main character, but I felt like she was a good choice to introduce us to the world. Excited to see more of Jack and Jill in future books.

Note to self: do not read books without reading the description first. I don’t know why I did that with this one, but it meant I was surprised by a lot of things at the beginning.

Ultimately, I thought this was a book with a super intriguing concept and some good scenes and elements but ultimately lackluster execution of a lot of it.

I appreciated the body positivity and the treatment of Marcus’s dyslexia. I especially liked when April called out fatphobia in the fandom and he responded as BAWN. That was maybe the part of the book where I actually cared about their relationship the most.

Overall, I thought that the characters’ online friendship was much more compelling than their actual relationship, and I spent a lot of the book wishing that they’d both been celebrities or both been normal fans. I know that some aspects of the books wouldn’t have worked at all with that change, but the inherent power dynamic that came from him knowing so much more and keeping so much from her for so much of the book made it kind of hard to root for them.

Also, Marcus is SO MUCH more developed as a character than April is. I’m realizing that this is pretty typical in straight contemporary romances, but I don’t love it.

Alex was an interesting side character. I’d almost be willing to read the second book for more of him. I didn’t like how his ADHD was blamed for anything he ever did wrong, though.

The whole concept of the Gates of the Gods show basically being Game of Thrones but make it the Aeneid made me scream a lot. In both good and bad ways. It was wild.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

“Self-love is a survival skill, not a luxury for the privileged.”

Please note that I am a white queer reviewer and that this book’s audience is primarily QTBIPOC readers.

Decolonizing Wellness is a wonderful book full of healing messages for all marginalized people working to unpack the damage done by heteropatriarchal white supremacy and to move past. Dalia Kinsey writes with insight and compassion on a variety of topics, with a focus on self-love and body liberation.

The final chapter, which focus on honoring your ancestors’ dreams of freedom, felt especially liberatory to me, especially as it introduced me to the idea of chosen ancestors. I’m going to be thinking about that chapter for a long time, I think.

While some of the information presented in this book felt a bit basic as someone who has already been on a decolonization journey, I don’t think I’ve encountered another published book that would serve as an introduction to body liberation as well as this one does. 

I did have some minor issues with the language used in this book at certain points. It was the sort of thing that I see online—like the use of the meaningless term “femme-identifying” in an effort to be inclusive when other language would have been more precise—but I think it’s worth noting that Kinsey’s approach to certain issues is occasionally somewhat imprecise and messy.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has been failed by mainstream discussions of wellness. I’m also delighted to learn that the author has a podcast and will definitely be checking it out!

I hate it when fiction glorifies monarchies, especially in modern contexts, but this book, with its focus on decolonization and progress, really pulled it off.

This is a romance book, and the romance was fine. I wasn’t totally invested in their love or whatever, but I was VERY invested in their partnership and their growth, and I did like them together. 

I found the rest of the plot more compelling than the romance, but luckily for me, there was a great mix of both. Shanti, with her laser-sharp focus on her goal of becoming a queen, and Sanyu, with his insecurities and anxieties about being king, were both interesting and compelling. 

I thought the handling of abuse and power and patriarchy in this book was pretty good, though the nature of it being a romance means that things got resolved a little too neatly. 

The Njazan politics were super interesting and maybe my favorite part of the book, though some of the religious stuff got wrapped up too quickly as well.

I would absolutely read another book set in Njaza. I’d love to see the traditional triad marriage play out in a polyamorous romance novel if the author ever decides to write something like that!

I probably should have started with the Reluctant Royals series since this book has a lot of references to those ones, but I’m planning to read the second Runaway Royals one next because that one is sapphic. Alyssa Cole has done a really impressive job of creating a whole network of fictional countries with fictional monarchies. I think it’s the most worldbuilding I’ve ever seen in a romance series, and I’m definitely here for it!

This is a book for former gifted kids, and I love that about it.

Is it as good as the original Mysterious Benedict Society books? No. Absolutely not. But how could it be?

The plot is barely existent, the ending is sort of meh, and there are a LOT of info dumps.

But this book really feels like a love letter to fans of the characters who have now grown up somewhat and are trying to figure out what to do with themselves. I loved seeing how everyone has changed or stayed the same as they grew up. I loved that the found family doesn’t completely un-find itself. I even really appreciated the direction Mr Curtain headed in (in terms of character growth, not physical direction). 

I did kind of feel like I’d been queerbaited when Rhonda’s spouse was revealed to be a man, though.

This was a really good contemporary YA book and a really bizarre take on Twelfth Night. I’ll start with the first bit.

The Last True Poets of the Sea is a book about grief. It’s about history. It’s about trauma. It’s about how people carry those things with them from generation to generation. It has some beautifully complicated and at times tragic sibling relationships. It has a teen sapphic romance that feels realistic for the characters and where they are in their lives.

It also has most of the things that one might expect from a Twelfth Night retelling: A love triangle, a shipwreck, a character named Toby, twins…

But all of those parts of the story are remixed to a degree that didn’t really make sense to me. The shipwreck and the twins (and the gender stuff) are in the past. The love triangle is completely different because Violet falls for Liv first and Orion is for some reason straight. Toby is Violet’s uncle rather than Liv’s. Most of the subplots are cut completely, which makes sense but was still sad (well, I didn’t really miss Malvolio, but I wanted a proper Sir Andrew character, goddammit!). 

The book still works despite these changes to the source material, and they were obviously make deliberately. They just bugged me as a fan of the original play who enjoys seeing new takes on it.

I also have a couple little nitpicks:

Liv refers to herself and Violet as anagrams. This makes sense thematically, but the names Violet and Olivia are NOT anagrams. This was very confusing because the author could have actually given them names that used all of the same letters!

Also, this is a very white book. It makes sense because it’s set in small-town Maine—maybe the whitest part of the US—but why was Violet always remarking on the fact that random side characters were white people when she and all the other characters were also white people? Very odd.

Well, contemporary romance and I have had a good run. I’ve mostly been good at picking the books in this genre that I’m actually going to like. And I really wanted to like this one too, but my feelings about it are pretty conflicted.

I did love the characters, especially Michael. Okay, mostly Michael. All of his internal conflicts are totally ridiculous, but they feel real. HE feels real. His family is written in a really lovely way. I adored his mother and grandmother and sisters from their first introduction, and if I read the other books in the series, it will definitely be to see more of that family.

My feelings about Stella are more complicated. The writing of her autism is really sensitive and thoughtful, which makes sense because Helen Hoang is also autistic. And I think this book tackles internalized ableism in a refreshing way. But Stella is SO rich and SO privileged and SO invested in capitalism and also SO straight that it was really hard for me to care about her as much as I wanted to.

This book as a whole is one of the most aggressively heterosexual things I’ve ever read. The whole underwear thing made me cringe multiple times. And that’s a personal thing! Many readers would find that aspect of the story sweet and endearing, but it was all too gendered and too California capitalist for me to really care as much as I would have liked.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This book has some of the most unfortunate cover art I've ever seen. The cover is in no way representative of the book: the two main characters aren't supposed to look that similar, only one of them is a highland dancer (and that only comes up once), and they're both blonde. The women on the love look like identical twins, not lesbians.

The book itself is fine, though! I enjoyed a lot of the character moments. I liked the found family and the discussions about care and aging and being near the people you love. Roxanne's friendship with Eve was lovely and occasionally tragic and felt very realistic.

There's relatively little miscommunication, but the characters are simply not on the same page for most of this book. They do work through it, though, and the romance ended up being pretty sweet, though also pretty unsexy.

This book relies a little bit more on the first book than most romances do. All of the relevant events get summarized, but reading Highland Fling first probably would have helped me understand what was going on more quickly. Unfortunately, I have very little interest in reading it.

Overall, if all you want is lesbians in Scotland, this book will definitely deliver that, but I didn't find the writing or plotting to be particularly strong. I would consider reading a future book by this author, though.

This is such a strange, gorgeous little book. Nothing makes sense until suddenly everything does. The different characters are hard to tell apart and keep track of, but then everything crystallizes and they become so beautifully distinct. 

I already know that I’m going to be rereading it, maybe several times, to fully appreciate the prose and to fully understand what’s going on.