BRILLIANT reminded me why I loved the Gothic so much before, excellent all round

Easiest 5 stars of the year hands down for me. I looooooved the characters in this - I loved the thread connecting them , and the overarching story of Lionel, Charles and Sophie with individual stories interlaced. I loved Taylor’s writing, so beautifully paced, considerate, funny, young, and equally devastating. I loved the themes of trying to live a pure life in an impure world, trying to survive as a wounded person amidst other wounded people. Ugh just so good , was so unsure because I’m crap at reading short stories but this felt like one story with multiple offshoots, connected by a sense of being young in a world where toughness is the key.

What an excellent imaginative book!! Enjoyed so much getting into some autumnal dark academia fantasy which isn’t my usual genre , but I just had such a good time reading this. It’s so hard to write magic + ghost stories in an original way but Bardugo does it so well here, I loved how the grays were imagined & I loved the insidious nature of the houses, coupled with critiques on class + the dangers of the patriarchy, was a really nice pairing thematically + I loved Alex’s hero arc and how she is almost an antihero , it felt like a narrative that’s typically reserved for male protagonists and it was nice to see. Overall just had a good time & now I’m maybe going to read more Leigh Bardugo but we’ll see!

I really liked this, I did have some questions about if Ma should have written 2 books or if the editor could have blended her storylines better , but it didn’t inhibit my enjoyment of it. Loved the original ideas it brought to the apocalypse story and how it blended with the millennial condition in NYC , feels very apt right now while hustle culture is dying a death . The pandemic elements were so eerie, very weirdly prophetic, and very interesting to read about. I’m unsure about the religious elements too, I get that it was tying in capitalism and religion but there didn’t seem to be a concluding moral sentiment at the end apart from about the role of cities.
I did really like this and would recommend it for sure, just felt a bit unsure about the writing and plot construction at times, but I didn’t mind! Had a good time.