corabookworm's Reviews (264)

 I have some mixed feelings about this book, but overall it was entertaining and I enjoyed reading it. 

All That Consumes Us is about a girl, Tara, joining a secretive academic society that ends up being more sinister than it appears. She starts getting strange phone calls and waking up more exhausted than normal, and the stories she writes have turned dark, eerie, vengeful.

To be honest, I was pretty hesitant after reading the first few chapters of this book. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it. The story starts with Tara wallowing in depths of self pity and being a rather flat character. Even after finding the body of a student in the library, her reactions didn’t quite make sense to me—the obsession with Meredith came out of nowhere and was a bit creepy. 

After that, though, the plot began to pick up and I was hooked by the mystery. It was well-paced, creepy, and intriguing. The way history was woven into the story was absolutely fascinating, and I loved the unique supernatural elements. (Isabella’s story was so cool, and the whole thing with Cicada… I loved it.) The ending wrapped everything up nicely, too.

Overall, this definitely wasn’t my favorite book. I didn’t love most of the characters, and some elements of the plot didn’t really make sense. But I did enjoy it, especially as I got further into the story. If you liked books like A Lesson in Vengeance or other supernatural-feeling dark academia mysteries, this one’s for you! 

Daughter of Winter and Twilight is a beautifully-crafted atmospheric YA fantasy. It picks up a little while after Queen of Coin and Whispers ended and features Lia and Xania’s adoptive daughter. While reading the first book can provide a little bit more understanding of these characters and this world, it isn’t necessary. Daughter of Winter and Twilight stands up just fine on its own, and recaps enough of the first book’s events that if you forgot everything (like me), it’s easy to catch up. 

In this book, Emri is grappling with the intricacies of foreign politics as her cousin, Melisande, visits court. Those problems are quickly replaced by much bigger ones, though, when both heirs are ripped from the castle and thrust into a magical adventure assembled by ancient gods. 

One of the reasons I think I enjoyed this book more than the first is that Helen Corcoran has clearly grown as a writer. Her voice is more clear, her characters more unique, and the story more interesting. I don’t remember how much Queen of Coin and Whispers described the setting, but Daughter of Winter and Twilight goes a bit deeper into the world building. I understood the world better and found it easier to follow the story in this book.

That being said, the plot did have its ups and downs. It would have almost been better as a standalone, without the connection to Queen, because this series didn’t really need magic. The politics in the first book were interesting enough on their own, and the new addition of magic and gods to this world felt a tiny bit forced. I did love the whole facing-their-past theme of the book, though, and the way the characters slowly unraveled the tensions between them and confronted the traumas and mistakes of their pasts was very fascinating. And I did enjoy the gods. I thought the concepts behind them were interesting, and I liked the distinctive personalities tied to their domains.

Speaking of characters, that is another one of Corcoran’s strengths. I loved glimpsing Lia and Xania’s life as a happy ruling couple, the awkwardness between Emri and Theo, and the tension between her and Melisande. Every character was unique, with stories and personalities that all tied together as they struggled through their little mountain quest. (I also adored Gabi, as grumpy as she was.)

To conclude; this book was very good. The casual queer representation (even without a major romance storyline!) was lovely to see, and the story and world were both very unique. The reason I knock off a star is because of the slower pacing and the random addition of magic. If you enjoy politics, mythology, and icy worlds (like The Winter Duke), you’ll enjoy this one.

Aiden Thomas has once again blown me away with this funny, magical, and fast-paced adventure. If you liked Cemetery Boys or enjoy Hunger-Games-like stories, this one’s for you.

Absolutely fantastic. I laughed out loud and almost cried so many times during this book. Loved it. 10/5 stars. :)

I might post a more in-depth review later, but for now, just know that it was very good and I adored the characters and I CANNOT wait to read the sequel.

Update: i’m gonna cry <33

Review: I was absolutely thrilled to finally get my hands on a copy of this book, and it did not disappoint. The fourth compendium of The Walking Dead series covers the war with the Whisperers and the discovery of the Commonwealth. Though these are both major events in the TV show as well, I still felt I had no idea what was going to happen, because of all of the differences. Many characters in the TV show that are dead by the time the Commonwealth appears are still alive in the books, so it was incredibly interesting to see their responses. Similarly, so many characters die in the comics that don’t die in the show that I was still terrified for all of them. 

One of the big things about this book is that… it’s the end. The conclusion of a series that was published over the course of nearly twenty years and contained dozens of characters and plotlines. That’s quite the thing to wrap up.

Though the ending wasn’t perfect by any means (there was a lot of Kirkman’s signature dramatic dialogue, and the last volume felt a little cheesy and drawn-out), I loved it anyway. The author’s note, too, helped to explain some of Kirkman’s choices and made me appreciate it even more. The story would’ve become repetitive and boring if he’d drawn it out any longer, and bleak and disappointing if he’d finished it sooner. This was clearly the right time and way to do it, and I respect that. 

All in all, this book and series were very entertaining, and I’m so happy that I got to read them! If you enjoyed the TV show, or you’re a comics person and want a new world to explore, or even if you’re just a zombie apocalypse fan, I recommend these books.

Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman is a terrifyingly realistic book about the drought in California… taken to the extreme. When water stops running in an event called the “Tap-Out”, Alyssa, her younger brother, and their neighbor are plunged into a natural-disaster survival story as they fight to find her family. And water.

This book was absolutely fantastic. It reminded me of books I used to enjoy a lot in middle school, like Monument 14. Except this one felt much more realistic, which made it much scarier. The entire time I was reading, I was playing out “what-if” scenarios in my head (I definitely don’t survive the Tap-Out, btw). Neal and Jarrod Shusterman are also masters of suspense and action, building a tense, heart-racing adventure in which I genuinely feared for the main characters, multiple times. Everything went wrong, and everyone was dying, and it was absolutely spectacular. 

To be honest, this book was kind of disappointing. Grace D. Li is an excellent writer, and I loved all of her lovely descriptions and dialogue, but the story itself didn’t hold my interest. The idea behind this book is that a group of bright college kids are hired to steal back five pieces of Chinese art from European and American museums and return them to China. The fact that these kids were supposed to be super smart and still decided to go through with this plan seemed unrealistic to me, but I was willing to set reality aside for the sake of the book. 

The story seemed advertised as a heist novel to me, but very little of it focused on the actual heists, and most of it was conversations that I had to skim just to finish the book. The random time skips made it feel, to me, like big chunks of the plot and the character's development were missing. I also didn’t like the characters very much. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good group-of-pretentious-students, dark-academia-type story, but the characters all had very similar personalities and inner monologues, which made the multiple POVs (and all the drama) repetitive and confusing. 

I feel like all of this is a lot of critiques, so I want to reiterate: this is not a bad book! If you like this kind of story, it might be for you! It just was not my cup of tea.

This book was incredible. As George Johnson narrates  experiences in his childhood and young adult life that helped shape his identity, he shares advice for Black kids and queer kids, explaining what he’s learned and what he wish he’d known. He also comments on some flaws in American society, specifically the exclusion of Black history and queer sex education from most curriculums. All in all, I found this book entertaining, emotional, inspiring, and informative.