blewballoon's Reviews (763)

 I picked this book up on a whim based on the cover and I feel really grateful I did. This was awesome. This is exactly my kind of fantasy book. Such great characters, wonderful adventures, creative magic. Normally I avoid books with any kind of SA content warning, but I had no issues here. The subject was handled as tastefully and respectfully as I think is possible and it did not feel like a cheap female character trauma at all. I wasn't sure how I felt about the potential romance brewing at first, since I had other ideas for how I wanted the book to go, but ultimately I can't blame them for falling in love with each other when I would have done the same in their position. 

I went into this with low expectations, I just picked the audiobook from the ones I had available because the narrator seemed alright. I ended up enjoying this very much! If you like Pride and Prejudice and you like Sherlock Holmes, you will probably enjoy this too. The characters were interesting and complex, they brought a lot of life to the story and added more to the stakes. Lily is a great protagonist, not just a gender-flipped Sherlock Holmes, she has her own personality and tendencies. The author did a good job of illustrating how quick witted she is, while also giving the reader enough information to keep up with Lily and feel satisfied by her realizations and how she handles a situation.

Read this on a cozy snow day while sipping tea. These books are so sweet and beautiful.

I was really looking forward to this, but I ended up disappointed. I listened to this on audiobook and I don't think that helped. The translated prose is extremely redundant and clunky.

We had to hear the rules about time travel at least 5 times, but it felt like 50.

For an already short book, it feels like it could have been so much shorter. The characters felt like one-dimensional cliches and 

each trip to the past resulted in the most predictable outcome. I don't mind things being predictable in general, but there was so little substance to make it worth reading.

I love the idea of the premise, but it felt like a drag the entire time.

Mildly disappointed there is no cat in the book despite there being one on the cover.

I started this and stayed up until 2am reading it, then finished it the next morning. I was certainly gripped and the suspense sucked me in, but that doesn't necessarily mean the plotting and characters were great. I can't read too many books with this type of dark content, but I would say if you like thrillers this is effective enough. Check the content warnings and other reviews. 

This was fine. For a short book, it felt long. There was a lot of ambiguity throughout and not all questions were answered. 

I really enjoyed this. I liked the main characters and the writing. I liked the magic. I do think the fantasy sexism was a little over the top, that's my biggest complaint. I did find a lot of things predictable, but I don't necessarily mind that. I prefer it over the narrative not being cohesive. I listened on audiobook and Moira Quirk is a delight. I really liked her spirit voice. 

This was a fun, easy read to celebrate finishing reading all of the Jane Austen novels. I enjoyed the crossover aspect and seeing the characters from different stories interact, I think that's the real selling point of the book. I did enjoy the murder mystery and the author did a good job of creating plenty of motives and red herrings to keep you in suspense. I would recommend this if you are familiar with Jane Austen's works and characters, but would not recommend it otherwise. The author assumes you know these characters well already. There is a lot of POV switching. In my opinion, probably too much switching, it may have been better to just focus on the POV of the two new characters. The many POVs makes it harder to follow especially if you haven't already got the backstory and nuance of their perspectives from their characterization in the Jane Austen novels.

I didn't love the first one and had to keep forcing myself to put on this audiobook. My friend who I was reading it with said they would just continue and let me know what happens. They had read the first book before we listened to it on audiobook together, and said that the series maybe suffers from audiobook format because you can't skip past the more boring discussions and introspection that goes on. No fault of the narrators, though.