cozysabie's Reviews (183)

"I learned that love always finds us in the most unexpected way. In the most unexpected person."

"But if she had to seek out a love potion to get his attention, then whatever was between them clearly wasn't love."

"We'll figure this out. We Always do." She (Adelaide) was wrong. We didn't figure out anything. I always handled the problems that came our way, and for the first time in my life, I was out of solutions"

"I haven't corrupted anyone. I'm just refusing to settle. We all are."

"She seemed so lost in this world and I didn't know how to help her find her place."

"Guilt bubbled like our cauldron full of soup. I was the cause of this. Adelaide had been so happy the first few days we'd been here, and it was like someone had stolen her light. I stole her light. I was the thief, and I needed to return what I'd taken."

"It sounds like you've met your match, Draven Darkstone."

"So you think Elspeth got scared? I asked. "Because of me?"
"Because she loves you, and love is terrifying," Elmy said."

"Neither wolves nor humans are meant to be on their own."

"She was going to charm the pants off them (other moms) and make sure no one ever told her daughter she didn't belong somewhere again."

"She always thought that she would be the kind of mom who lifted the car to save the baby, who grabbed the kid right before they fell off the bridge. Instead, she had frozen at the point where she could have changed the story. Stood there locked in fear and panic."

"Vivian's eyes prickled. She had felt weird calling on the pack to even give advise; she had never expected them to involve themselves. And for the other parents to rally — she tried to remember a time she'd ever felt like a community had had her back before, and she came up blank."

"She'd made friends with the right people, and it hadn't been enough to keep this from happening.
Because the people who she was supposed to make nice to, the people her mother would have told her to befriend, were jerks. No matter how many favors she'd done them, it wouldn't have kept this from happening.
Because nothing she could have done could have kept this from happening.
Because it wasn't her fault."

"Aria's one of our own," Mrs. Fairhair reminded her. "And by extension, so are you. Neither wolves nor humans are meant to be on their own."

"They would be fine, certainly, but they would never be the same. They each knew the building was rotten to the core, even those of them who did not know about me growing in the rot. They loved the Crown anyway: they had come of age here, found each other here. Their lives had played out over the linoleum and under the halogen, the back-and-forth with their customers, the reek of supermarket deli and the food court, the rotating seasonal decorations, day after day, year after year, the place getting more worn and them just living through it. Thriving against it, in some ways burning all the brighter for the decay. They would be fine, after. Better than fine."

"Shell's own voice inside her head had been so loud lately. We all need help. She imagined that whoever it was running a dank little flower shop in the Woodbine Crown probably needed a fair amount of help. Maybe not more than her, necessarily. But more than most."

"There was a thick in the air that you couldn't condition out, a gelatin feeling, suffocating. It made Shell fell like she was eight, fourteen and perhaps like she was seventy-two and still here, in a shopping centre adjacent to her housing estate, still here, still in this place. It wouldn't let her leave this part of the world and she had worked so hard to get gone. She almost had."

"I chose Shell, make no mistake, but there was a helpful organic chemistry waiting there, too. This was no possession. I did not even lift the heat of Shell's blood any higher on the stove of her, not necessarily. Shell saw Neve's face, her smile, and took in her body, and something in Shell's own body made a decision."

"She'd felt very little other than the same gradient of miserable after the extremity of her own sorrow had become boring to even her. she will find new pain to thrill through herself in no time. I will lead her there and she will, I am sure, follow me like I am a miracle.

I am, though.

A miracle."

"She hadn't felt this good in a year, maybe more...This might have been my work, my pollen in the air, or it might have been that Shell was so lonely, so desperate to belong that even the run-down brutalism of a desolate shopping mall could easily feel romantic to her. The romance might have begun with Neve, but it certainly began to extend to the crown."

"I liked Daniel. I understood him to be good. I have listened to him and what the inside of him sounds like, and he meets the pain of others with love. The things he has overcome are not what he wears in his manner. It is a deep feat to move with grace when you have been granted little to none. I would never see Daniel hurt again in his life. At night, when Daniel prays, it is for love. And love I would grant him. I am not close to him in any way other than my leaves and vines and listening —I do not hold him the way I hold my Never — but my vines are around him still. If Neve was not my favourite, my best one, it would perhaps be somebody like Daniel."

"Bec had that impact on people; I witnessed it again and again. She had that same frustrating smoothness that Jen did: a confidence that I could never quite break through. I understood why she and Jen liked each other. It must have been a relief for them to be in each other's company, so little insecurity between them. I preferred, myself, to ignore Bec. I did not enjoy her."

"Neve orbited her, a clumsy satellite, saying almost nothing, a face dappled with acne, eyes glassy and already holding a secret bigger than her body. She was good at secrets. Perhaps this was what drew me towards her, the first thing I liked most about her — she had a lot of space for me to grow. I would find more chambers in her for more secrets, over time, the girl a cathedral, a mall with an empty store for each bad thing she did for me, for each witnessing."

"It feels like we did nothing but talk for the first few years. It was when the talking stopped that I knew it was over: you have to learn to love somebody in the quiet of themselves, as well as the noise, the chatter. I'm not sure she loved me quiet, either"

"The Sensation of relief is like a heavy, hard thing inside the body dissolving, returning to blood. I am that heavy thing, and she cannot loosen herself of me but she still felt lightness. I said, You will never be free of me, and she said, loud, through the chambers of her body, Yes I will."

"She was trying to pretend she didn't need me, shutting down the part of herself that had so closely been my attendant for as long as I have been this side of earth. As if there weren't blood on her hands, too, oh, finding her exit, finding her sweet second life after me. There is no life after me, Neve. There is nothing after me, only us."

"A wolf in orchid's clothing."

"The ache this gave her was dull, not sharp. You can feel sorrow of a thing that is gone without wanting it back, like mourning the version of yourself who was happy — for whom this was enough."

"She was simply acting out, we knew. It was a lot to hold. Not everyone had our fortitude, our peace when faced with a dead thing. Flowers are dead, the second they are cut from the ground they're gone, but they have the unique property of growing more beautiful as they take towards the wilt, the rot. The Neve part of us had known, in life, exactly how to handle death, both in her art and in her material quality of what it cost to feed the Baby part of us. This is why we were the perfect match. She had what was needed."

"The reek of disaster would float over the schools and to the motorway. For miles, people would wonder what it was, the stench. How disaster carries."

"Because science is magic. Only real."

"Its easy to get lost in the directionless flow of time — to let the gravity of endless possibilities drag us into chaos from which we would never escape."

"I'm not, and never have been, 'normal'. Whatever that is. Not my sense of humor. Not my hobbies. Not my taste in music or movies or even pets. Not my compulsion for drawing and journaling and making lists of random crap to help keep stuff straight in what can be a kinda 'noisy' brain. Not the half dozen mental health professionals I've been through since I was four."

"I dreamed...I was Archidamia, dressed in Spartan armor, holding a fearsome sword. The trumpet of a war-elephant exploded in my ears and I was ready to battle."

"More than shared dreams or puzzle door or fairies flying on wings of light — seeing the Portal made the rest of my life make sense. My mom had been taken by a fairy. My dad wasn't crazy. My family was connected to this place. In an instant, I knew in my very core that there was more to living than trying to please my abuelos or dealing with 8th grade pettiness — there was meaning. There was purpose. I had purpose.

"Politics was like warfare, but without the weapons and the killing."

"She cooked for us like a chef, mended our clothes like a professional tailor and ruled the house like a benevolent tyrant."

"A broken heart is a powerful thing, Sissy would whisper. Wars have been started over one."

"Some believe we lose things we take for granted and only when we have made amends do we get back those things."

"Memories were like stars. Without the stars, the night sky would be empty and dark. And without memories, Ella felt empty and alone. She had hoped this day would be different. That somehow a memory had slipped through the fog of her mind. But the only things that filtered through were the sounds of her new life."

"The fact that stared back at her looked familiar, but some pieces were not. She didn't know how she had gotten the scar on her lip. Or why this morning her eyes shone a bright blue green instead of the stormy gray blue they had been last night. but the memory she missed the most was her name. A name made her someone. Someone to miss and someone to love."

"When Ella first came to Riverton, she had been heartbroken. She was unaware of the reason for, nor could she put a fact with, that heartbreak. For days she cried over something or someone she didn't remember."

"Enough. it is time to let go of this silly idea that your past will catch up with you. You will be twenty-eight in a few short weeks. You are too old to believe in fairy tales."

"It will happen, Ella. I feel it in my bones. You will marry for the greatest love known to man. I promise."

"She didn't want to see the pity in Thane's eyes. That was an emotion that people gave so freely. They never asked before they handed it out and expected the recipient to be grateful and accepting."

"Such was the story of Ella's life. A life of burrowed pieces that didn't fit together."

"Once there was a god who lost her memories. She wished them away. The silly god found herself in the mortal realm. There she found a boy and a girl, both wishing for the same thing: love. Then came a mother and daughter, both with a heart big enough to love everyone. But as curses go, one must die, and one heart must break. Who is it ...."

”Luna was fae and human. Half of each, and wholly perfect. I wished she’d had more people in her life who made her feel that way.”

“My gaze met his, and those deep brown eyes were my calm in the storm. I knew he was trying to communicate with me.”

”She seemed so sure of her place in that moment. My wind surged with longing, like a squall in my chest. It must be nice. I might be old fae, but I no longer knew where I fit in this city.”

“I was decidedly uncomfortable, but I liked that about her. She didn’t hide herself from the world like I did. She was unapologetically her in everything she did. Her curiosity was intoxicating. How she spoke whatever was on her mind had me hanging on her every word. And her energy—the confidence she exuded simply by being herself—was more attractive than I was prepared to ignore.”

“Seeing the top on the bartender, I regretted it further. The sweater was all wrong on her. It seemed too timid, too reserved for someone whose eyes still raged like a summer storm.”

“My heart beat rapidly as I watched her go. She was the sea retreating from the shore it bore down on, and I feared she took a piece of me with her when she left.”

“Wind wrapped around me as I did. It was lovely how well the wind and water worked together. Some might think they were constantly competing for control, but I thought they had more of a partnership than we realized. The wind circled tighter, bringing an uncommon warmth that took me a moment to recognize. When I did, I glanced over my shoulder to see Vincent standing at the bottom of the steps.” 

“I’d like to think the city taught me how to deal with all manner of people, those who liked me and those who believed me not worth their time. The one person I never learned how to deal with was my father.” 

“Part of me wanted to hear his side of the story. The pain of his absence wouldn’t disappear, but we could only start fresh once I understood his perspective of these childhood events.”

“When everything I knew collapsed like a house of cards, Vincent refused to let it fall—his wind would hold every piece in place until I was ready for my next move. He was solid ground, even as the continent tilted beneath my feet. Maybe he made me feel safe, too.”

“The image of a partner with whom to share my burdens. A friend with whom to share my joys. And a lover with whom to share my heart.”

“I knew Vincent was with me. We may have started this relationship with our own goals and desires, but they’d merged somewhere along the way. A joint desire to stand with each other. To support each other. To partner together through whatever life brought. It was intoxicating to know someone was as focused on my pleasure as I was on theirs.”

“You are magic to me. It has nothing to do with your element.” His wind swept in and wrapped around us even as he said it. 
“Your element might have something to say about that.” He glanced over his shoulder like his magic was a physical thing perched there. 
“We’re still in a heated debate about which of us brings you more pleasure.” He winked.”