Super cute (and sexy) but I think a longer format for more character development would have done this story a lot of good as the romance was quite rushed. Liked the characters a lot! 

 Such a breathtaking read (and the audiobook narration is to die for!). The idea that books are actually lived experiences by people that have been captured so that they can forget them (whatever that reasoning may be) is compelling as heck, but as we can see from the POV characters, it can be a hell of a thing when it's not what you really want. A great love story. I got through 3/4 of the book in one day and the first 1/4 of the book I read like months ago and then I got side tracked by other books and only just now came back to it; it didn't actually take me 2.5 months to finish it. 

 STAHP. They're so adorable I wanna squish them together and make them kiss. I love all these nerds and can't wait to see what happens next. Had to go buy the next book because I couldn't wait for it to become available in the library, dammit.

LET'S GO! This was a blast. I love this world.

6/27/24 Re-read
I'm re-reading the books for the final book that just released. I still am blown away by the set-up to this world, especially now that I've read some other stories with concepts with similar grains. This one still remains at my top, mostly because the characters are so well written in this intro. 

 Something about this one didn't hit me quite the same as the first book. It was like it was trying to fit in as many mythological creatures/myths as possible so it felt a little disingenuous to me. I still liked the characters a lot, but the dichotomy between the two seems massive.

The ending was predictable and lackluster. The whole book was missing the spice and sass that the first book had. It wasn't bad, but it was kind of boring and I found myself zoning out a lot. I love mythology so this was right up my alley and yet I just wasn't really interested in this because everything was dumped into your lap so quickly that it didn't even feel believable. The antagonists were lame and cookie-cutter and

the main one from the previous book was just conveniently dead when the main characters were finally meant to face off with her?! What the hell was that shit?

All and all, a big bummer of a follow up. 

 ETA 12/16/2024: The updated version of this was much better than what I felt when I originally read this. It's been long enough that I didn't really remember what was in it before and what was added, but these revisions were definitely beneficial. It's interesting to see how we grow as authors and it's obvious that SS has developed quite a lot since the original version of this book. I will definitely see where things go in following installments.

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So the premise of this sounded really interesting, but not sure it executed as well as I expected it to. I am kind of on the fence on whether I want to keep reading the series or not as it wasn't objectively bad or anything, but it has a lot of tropes in it that give me flashbacks to Throne of Glass which I gave 3 books of my life to and still regret to this day. But the writing is definitely better and I find the world more engaging. 

Hmm, not sure yet. I have to have a think on this one for a bit. 

 So I think this was what Wilder Girls should've been (but wasn't). It irked me quite a lot (in the way it should have), reminded me of both that book and House of Hollow, but didn't quite hit me in just the right places as HoH did to give me a 5 star, though it was quite close. The atmosphere was always so spooky, but there was a nice amount of humor sprinkled in that lightened up the mood from time to time and made it bearable.

I think I was left with some unanswered questions that bug me, but overall I really liked most of the characters and their relationships felt authentic and so did their hopes and fears and the ways that they interacted with the world around them. There was a decent plot, but I definitely found the characters more intriguing for the most part. 

 So far, so good on everything I have read of Skrutskie's. I liked the premise of this and the characters were all really interesting and fun to follow.

I would say that there could have been a bit more fleshing out toward the end when

Murdock goes with the faithful and becomes one of them, because it didn't really feel 'believable' that she had committed herself to that and when we only see a vague hand-wave of initiation week of it and one small return mission before the run-in with her past crew, there's no real stakes to dig into.

And it honestly made no sense for the Justice to allow her access to anything that quickly anyway, so I would say a bit more time in that plot point would make it more believable.

 

 So aspects of this book kept me both more interested than the first but also more annoyed. First, I think the side characters get a bit more fleshy in this, which was nice to see. I felt a bit less confused about certain aspects of the world and how the school works which was helpful in understanding everything.

What I didn't like was the whole savior complex addition to the MC and how unlimited Mary Sue she started to feel, whereas Orion felt a bit more realistic this time around. I still don't think this series is outrageously good by any means, but I will still finish it because I'm interested to see the outside world. 

 Really enjoyed this a lot! I found the magic and world-building engaging, POV characters were varied and interesting, and there was always something to look forward to! I know in many multi-POV books I find myself dreading when there is a character switch sometimes because I don't care that much about their storyline but I genuinely found each storyline exciting!

I found a few plot points predictable, but that's never really been a clincher for me (especially since I've really only started predicting plot points recently and am not sure where this power came from), and I did get one (or two?) things wrong so that's always good! Definitely recommend and excited for the next book! 

 Probably about a 4.5 for me. The ending was kind of a drop-off; I would've liked a little more in that closing sequence and may less in some of the other sequences would've been fine--probably less of the TV show could've worked. The show was not bad, but I would've liked to see where Blue ends up once the loop is closed and maybe just a glimpse of how things changed for everyone. I know it's probably not meant to be known, but that's always more interesting to me when it comes to time-traveling.

I loved how everything converged near the middle and you didn't have to spend like 75% of the book super confused and only find out toward the end what was really going on. That helped make it easier to get invested in all the characters--though the "LI" (Gil?) from the beginning kind of dropped off the face of the earth and could have been revisited in some way.

It was a very enjoyable, gritty queer scifi read.