Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of “Just Friends”.

Star rating: 3.5

In “Just Friends”, we meet Bea who is just a little socially awkward, a little self conscious and a little introverted. She is also very smart, sensitive and funny.
I loved her from the very beginning. We follow her through a part of her life, where she is just not really content with anything. Her job bores her, she has a side business for greetings cards with puns on them which she doesn’t really develop any further and romantically she is in a total rut.
It doesn’t help that all of her friends are seemingly happily paired off and are getting married. Everyone but Peter that is.
Peter, who is always here for her no matter what and who supports her through everything while bringing fried chicken. In short: the perfect man.
But Bea has sworn that she would never again fall in love with a good friend because her last friends to lovers scenario didn’t end well. It gets even worse, when she starts realising that Peter is in fact the perfect man for her and can’t seem to shake the crush, even though she tries very hard.

I absolutely loved this cute friends to lovers story. It was very cute and relatable. Sometimes, it felt a little repetitive but the grand gesture moment in the end made it all worth it!
Bea doesn’t feel like your usual heroine who is seemingly awkward – Bea IS awkward. And I enjoyed that so very much. The fact that she is making cards with puns on them just put her into a whole different category for me than the other heroines who just lounge about in their high heels, sipping wine and saying they’re nerds without ever having heard anything about the MCU. So I am definitely a huge fan of Bea. I am also a huge fan of her friends and especially Peter. The love interest whose nick name is oddly bodly and who announces that he is wearing lounge pants and that everyone should have them. YES.

The characters are amazing, the story is adorable and I recommend this to anyone who needs a wholesome romance fix in their lives!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book

Nowhere on Earth was a fun, adventurous read. I will not spoil too much because all you do need to know before picking up this book is in fact: Emily and her brother survive a plain crash and are then being hunted.

Mysterious, I know. To know what this is all about you will have to read it.

The book is fast paced and exciting and action filled. For some reason, however, I did not manage to connect with the protagonist, Emily, at all, which became a problem because the book is written from her perspective and focuses a lot on her inner monologue, her thoughts and feelings, which had me sometimes a little exasperated.

I absolutely enjoyed the plottwist e.g. the answer to WHY they are being hunted. I think finding that out was my very favourite thing about this novel and I liked it considerably better from that point on. Overall, I did enjoy it and even though the ending was satisfactory, I felt like there should have been more. I can't really pinpoint my finger on it but I felt like after the whole running-from-men-with-guns thing, there would be more of a climax and that was kind of missing for me.

Nevertheless, I recommend this to anyone who likes fast and easy adventure stories and has fun with a good survival trope. It also helps if you like a bit of sci-fi next to your gathering-of-firewood.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of A Song Below Water in exchange for an honest review!

WOW.

Let that be said. I admit that it took me about 20 pages to be sucked into the story, but man, when I was there? I was there .

This is a story about misogynoir fused with fantasy/supernatural elements. What emerges is a story that is fast paced, intense and incredibly powerful.

Both main characters, Tavia and Effie have very distinct voices and offer not only more insight into their respective characters but are also used perfectly to achieve a more rounded characterisation of the other. While often frustrating, every single character in this book is thought through and properly fleshed out and it was a both a joy and a curse to live in this world a little while. The latter, because the injustice of the world is so real that it automatically makes you furious and angry at the real world we live in, where the hashtag Blacklivesmatter has to exist because it's not a given. It makes a white reader such as me even more aware of white privilege and the absolute injustice of the fact that it exists.

We need more books like this.

We need books like this until hashtags like these don't have to exist anymore because it doesn't matter who you are, who you love, what you look like or what you believe in.

That being said, I absolutely adored the mythical elements in this story and Effie's way of escapeism through being a mermaid at a Ren fair. As someone who loves going to comic cons and dressing up as my favourite characters sometimes (not that I do it well lol), I absolutely loved reading about her story line with Elric.

I also loved the mythical forms people took, such as there being a gargoyle and Tavia being a siren. I will absolutely not write more on this subject because I would absolutely spoil it for everyone who hasn't read this book yet. The world building, while a little confusing at the beginning, was fantastic and while I don't know anything about Portland at all except for that it is in the US, it was very easy to follow and to imagine.

I recommend this to... absolutely everyone because of the themes and topics. Especially those who love some good fantasy and supernatural elements in their stories. I absolutely can't wait to read what Bethany C. Morrow does next!

edit: also, can we talk about how breathtakingly beautiful that cover is?? I simply can't get over it!

This was incredibly cute. Tom Caval's effort to write "chick-lit" starring gay men is an absolute success.
In this novella, we get it all: the cute, relatable protagonist who is a bit naive, a bit socially awkward and a lot lovable. The amazing friends who would do anything for each other, who laugh and cry together and most importantly: who stay together. We have the evil ex and - of course - the absolutely dreamy, swoonworthy new man in the protagonist's life.

We get to follow Harry through some horrible dates, chance encounters and self-reflection and it was absolutely and utterly delightful. I cannot wait to read more by this author!