booktribe's Reviews (603)

📚 Angelita Unearthed: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚 Our Lady of the Quarry: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚 The Cart: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚 The Well:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 

📚 Rambla Triste: DNF

📚 The Lookout: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (TW: sexual assault, self harm, suicide attempt)

📚 Where Are You, Dear Heart?: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚 Meat: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚 No Birthdays or Baptisms: DNF (TW: pedophilia)

📚 Kids Who Come Back: DNF (TW: transphobic slurs)

📚 The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: ⭐️⭐️ (what is up with this book and its obsession with masturbation??😭😂)

📚 Back When We Talked to the Dead: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Average rating: 2.8 stars

Official rating: 3.5 stars 

A horror-filled read for the holidays! E. Reyes really knows how to write a great horror story!

📚Midnight Visitors: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚My Brother Daniel: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (tw: graphic animal murder)

📚The House by the Woods: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (tw: child abuse) 

📚Christmas Blues: ⭐️⭐️

📚Christmas in the Empty Cabin: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚A Scurry Furry Christmas: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Average rating: 3.6 stars
Overall rating: 4 stars 

The FMC is soooo rude for no reason like this man did nothing to you and you’re insulting him repeatedly while all he’s done is try to help you… I don’t understand her being so rude unprovoked. Make it make sense.

📚The Watered Soul: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Doc Buzzard’s Coffin: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Tw: racism, child SA mentioned but not shown)

📚9 Mystery Rose: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Hand of Glory: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Hag Ride: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚Homegoing: ⭐️✨

📚With the Turn of a Key: DNF

📚Path of the War Chief: DNF

📚Since Hatchet was a Hammer: ⭐️⭐️ (Tw: graphic domestic violence)

📚Rhythm: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚The Choking Kind: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Average rating: 2.7 stars😬

Overall rating: 3 stars

This young adult body-swap thriller was so fast paced and suspenseful! I was hooked from the very beginning & stayed engrossed in the story throughout the whole book! I loved that the mystery wasn’t easily predictable and that I had no idea the turns it would take. I cared about the characters! This does have a little bit of romance, but not so much that it takes over the story and distracts from the mystery. I was in a terrible reading slump when I started this book. No book I picked up could keep my attention. But when I started this, the fast pace & intrigue pulled me right out of that slump! 

I also appreciated how this story didn’t ignore the realities of being a Black person in thriller-genre situations and how there are very few safe options for us in instances like these. In thrillers by white authors we know that when the cops come, the day is saved. Or that people will actually believe those characters when they tell a person of authority the truth. That is not the case for us. And I really appreciate that this book touched on that and how we have to take things into our own hands to make sure that we keep ourselves and each other safe.

I did want to mention something that I didn’t like really quick. There was a point in this book where a character says “I don’t have the spoons for this.” I’m not sure if the author is aware, but the term “spoons” in this context is specifically used for the disabled community when pain or illness keeps us from being able to do the activities that we want or need to do. This term isn’t synonymous with the word “tired” or having “low energy”. It’s specifically for the chronic pain &  chronically ill community. This didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book because I feel like the author really probably doesn’t know. But I just want to address it so that the term doesn’t get misused.

I received a free early e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Balzer + Bray and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: child abuse, parental death, foster care

Call me weird or whatever, but I just do not find it attractive when men call women out their name in these romance books… I don’t care if he wouldn’t call HIS woman out her name, the fact that he’s so comfortable referring to women this way is not cute to me.

An actual quote from the male love interest: “I wasn’t a saint, but I knew how to treat a woman, and I used that term loosely. There were bitches I fucked ’cause I needed my dick wet, but a female that got to call herself my woman got shit those bitches never would.”

I was so excited for this one and I can tell that the book was good & that I would’ve really enjoyed it if the male mc didn’t talk about women like this. And this wasn’t even his first time speaking disrespectfully about women. That’s just not something I personally wanna read. 

I think the reason I didn’t enjoy this is because I was recommended this for horror manga to read after Tomie by Junji Ito. So I was definitely expecting horror and this did not feel horror at all. Based off this volume alone, it doesn’t feel horror at all, but more supernatural/paranormal.