I was incredibly excited for this book! I love the idea of two spies falling in love whilst pulling off a heist! However, this fell flat for me. I stopped reading at 38% in.

Firstly, there were a couple of things that I did enjoy. I liked that the characters were older, in their forties. It’s always refreshing to see older protagonists in romance. I also enjoyed the spy/heist aspect of the book! However, the romance couldn’t keep me interested. The characters lacked chemistry. I didn’t enjoy seeing them together, and the male love interest was just bland to me. I also felt that the pacing was off and the scenes were too long. It was one of those reading experiences where I felt like I had read wayyy more than I actually had because the story was dragging.

This one just wasn’t for me. While reading, I had put it on pause to focus on other books, and then I just realized that I had no desire to continue. But, I am still interested in checking out other books by Charish Reid and hopefully I’ll enjoy another one better!

Thank you NetGalley and Canary Street Press for this arc. All opinions are my own.

P.S. even though this book wasn’t for me, I absolutely loved that a cuddling scene was included! I feel like I don’t see them enough of them in romances, which is shocking, so romance authors, write in more cuddling scenes please🥰

I’m bored and I don’t think the payoff will be worth the build up.

Too gross for me. I don’t mind slasher gore, but I couldn’t take all the 💩 stuff, dead animals, etc. just not for me.

I was so excited for this one, but I just can’t connect to the writing style. It’s so chaotic and the story is skipping around too much. Every chapter takes place in a different time period. Nonlinear storytelling to THIS degree is just too much for me. 

Thank you Daw and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

Boringggggggggg. Almost 200 pages in and nothing has happened. I don’t care about most of these characters (except you Lan, you are loved, but not enough for me to continue) and I don’t care where the story is going.

Boringggggggg

I’m a huge fan of dark academia, and since it’s by a queer author of color, I genuinely thought I would love this, but I can’t get into it. I must DNF at 15%.

The first chapter started off with lots of info dumping, which was making the story drag. And from there it just got incredibly confusing. I had no idea what was going on. I couldn’t even picture what was happening in the scenes. I set it down because of how confusing it was, but I wanted to try to give it another chance eventually. But it has been several months and I haven’t been tempted to pick it back up, so I’m calling it. If I ever decide to try again, I’ll update my review!

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for his ARC. All opinions are my own.

This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024, but sadly it fell completely flat for me. I couldn’t finish this collection.

Firstly, I do want to mention something that I did enjoy. I absolutely loved the intro to the collection. It gave the collection as a whole purpose and an even deeper story! The intro really had me excited for the stories! However, this book is not what I thought it would be…

I was expecting this collection to be horror stories that empowered people of color, but these stories just center whiteness & racial trauma. I probably should have known from the title that the collection would center whiteness, but I genuinely thought this collection would flip the common trope of Black people & people of color dying first in horror on its head, but it didn’t. 

Every story is about racism or wanting to be white/fit in with white people. Why do all of these characters of color have such racist friends? I will mention that I had the privilege of growing up as a Black person in almost exclusively predominantly Black experiences. All of my schools were predominantly Black, I was hardly ever a minority surrounded by white people. So, maybe that’s why I don’t understand choosing to be friends with or date racists. But, that just felt unbelievable to me.

Another thing that bothered me is this: why does the white guy have to be racist to die first in EVERY story??? In all the movies and books where the Black person or person of color dies first, they didn’t have to deserve it. They were killed first whether they were good people or not. So, what bothers me is that it seems like this book feels the need to justify the white guy’s death with him always being racist. If we, Black people & POC, in these circumstances never have to deserve our death to be murdered, what makes the white guy any different? The white guy can just die without being racist, with no justification, just like us for all these years. THAT is how you turn the trope on its head.

Those things just made this collection disappointing for me as a Black reader CRAVING more BIPOC horror where WE are centered. I usually don’t read racism horror, I see enough of racism in real life, so I couldn’t enjoy this collection with so much blatant racism & micro aggressions in every single story without being prepared for that. Maybe one day I’ll come back to this knowing that it is racism horror and enjoy it more because I’ll be prepared for the anger and annoyance that comes with it, but for now, I won’t be continuing.

side note: out of all the stories I read, I can say that I did enjoy H. E. Edgmon’s story Best Served Cold!

Thank you Tor Teen and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own. 

This book just isn’t for me.

The writing style is very long-winded. I get that it’s a very character driven story, but I don’t need to know every single thought each character has to the point where it’s three pages of the character thinking about the same topic. I found myself skimming through several times because of this.

But, I was still interested enough in the story to keep going until things that I just can’t get with started happening in the story. A character called R. Kelly the king of RnB, the characters had no regard for human life

(as in they took someone’s life just because they were rude, or killing older women because you *thought* that they *may* have had something to do with a plot against you),

and a male character that we’re supposed to like punching a woman.

Idk I just like my fictional thugs to have some morals🤷🏽‍♀️

I’m almost halfway into this book and barely anything has happened. There’s so much emphasis on character development to the point where the story isn’t moving forward. This should’ve been a novella.