booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

Very description- and action-heavy, even the calm moments are packed with descriptions of where everyone is and exactly what they're doing. Not what I'm looking for.

The beginning felt off, it just didn't work for me.

Couldn’t handle it.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

LUCKY GIRL is a horror novel set at a succession of Christmases, following a young woman who has a Christmas dinner with strangers one year and their lives become entangled.

Usually I can tell pretty quickly whether I'll like a book or not, and I wasn't won over by the opening. But this one turned positive for me when they started telling the ghost stories, and I came away liking it a great deal. Some of the quirks in the main character's narrative style made it hard to tell how seriously the narrative was taking certain things, as she has a very flat way of conveying distressing information. This has a fascinating payoff and ended up being a new favorite character-driven ending for me. 

It touches on a wide variety of traumatic situations while avoiding graphic details on most of them. This means that while it's difficult to emotionally brace for what's about to be discussed in the narrative, there also isn't as much to brace for as there easily could have been.

This a well crafted bit of horror with a truly excellent payoff, don't miss it!

SPEAR is a wonderfully queer addition to Arthuriana, the protagonist filled with a hunger for belonging and a willingness to put in the work to achieve the rightness she can feel in her bones. 

I'm delighted by the characters I could recognize, they feel full and vibrant even when they are not the focus. The pacing is unhurried, allowing quiet moments to take up precisely the space they are due, only occasionally breaking into action and danger. It has grief and joy, each having space in their turn. The author narrated the audiobook and did an amazing job. The words flow easily and her performance enhanced the already excellent story. 

Having reached the end I'm contented by the time I spent with this book, and I'll happily spend time again. 

I missed that this was a rom-com. If I had I would have passed on this one altogether since that's a genre I almost never like. If you want a queer romcom about getting magical revenge on a cheater, you might like this. It's just not my thing.

A bunch of little things were making me uncomfortable, but the way the blood magic was used is the big one that made me stop. If the book engages with the way the blood magic is being used as something partly like a drug and explicitly as self harm then I'm not ready right now to read that book. If it doesn't end up engaging with those early themes then it's not a story I want to read at all. Either way, I'm stopping.

I like the way it uses three narrators for the audiobook, I'd happily listen to more of their work (singly or together).