Very sweet series, but the ending feels incredibly abrupt.
Could do with seeing more moments through out their lives.

This was one of my most anticipated books of late 2021, and it ended up being super disappointing for me.

If I could go back and edit this book I would remove a moment in the beginning of the book where Julie's mom, goes on about the government being after her and spying on them, conspiracies' and whatnot. Because it very much felt like a hook for a plot that this book didn't have. About some government hiding the afterlife, a way to talk to the dead, honestly anything. It wasn't even a red herring, looking back it feel completely out of left field.

I could have let this go, but honestly I had a moment where I thought Thao had gone a different route the the above mention Sci-Fi route.

Spoiler

When Julie is trying to call Sam with Mika there and it just rings and rings. She has the thought, what if this is just a hallucination. It was a missed opportunity for it not to be, in my opinion. I at no point felt like Julie really worked through her grief and having such an obvious sign of it could have been a trigger for her to seek the help she most definitely needed. Even at the end of this book canonically. Grief induced hallucinations are not uncommon and I think approaching them as such could have been really interesting in YA Fiction.

The ending just didn't hit home and I partially blame my love of Makoto Shinkai's works like 5 Centimeters per Second, that lack what we typically consider a satisfying ending. But this book especially in the later third gave me flashbacks to Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star with the slow loss of contact.

Spoiler

In some ways a Shinkai style ending was just within reach, with the destruction of
Julie's phone it could have been in many ways a parallel to her initial loss of Sam, a do-over if you may. Because so often we don't have the opportunity to say goodbye to someone before they pass, to tell them that we love them. But that doesn't make it less true.

Also can we just call out these Adults for not getting a single one of these kids in to see a grief therapist, or even a school councilor touching base with Julie when she came back.

Content Warning: Toxic/Abusive Relationships, Sexual Harassment, Sexually Explicit Scenes, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, Blood and Death. Mentions of Drug Use.

I did consider DNF-ing this book early on, just because this is a 6 book series. Also because the trigger warning had set me on edge, after Fortuna first enters the Unseelie Court.

I'm glad I didn't though, I quite like Fortuna as a character, as an oldest sister, I found so much kinship in how hard she was working to save her brother. More then once it left me wondering if I would go to those extremes for my siblings.

Watching how Fortuna adapted to the Unseelie Court as she vied for the crown was interesting. But also how her relationship with Collith constantly adapted during the book.

The one thing that is weird still to grasp, is that this book took place over the course of like a week.

Meh/10
It wasn't bad but it wasn't super interesting either.
It's schtick really just is that its just the cool guy that is literally swooning over the girl swooning over the guy.

I feel robbed, this was all build up for what I imagine is a fantastic story, only for it to end on a cliff hanger.

I really want to know where in the world Vallejo is taking this plot, because I found the characters he introduced interesting but the plot was so enticing and we get none of it in this book.

Content Warning: Abortion, Abusive Relationships, Castration, Female Genital Mutilation, Gun Violence, Referenced Drug Use and Overdose, Characters being Drugged, Kidnapping, References to Prostitution, Racism, Torture, Transphobia, and the one thing that is implied by the content warning Sexual Assault.

Heads up! This Book is also 1 of 2!

Let's start from the beginning, I think that they did themselves a disservice with the cover design, especially as it doesn't really represent the art style that is contained within the book. Which I guess is also a boon as this book is in no way marketed for anything other then a Mature Audience.

I liked the premise of this book, I haven't read A Picture of Dorian Gray, but lines in Net Galley's synopsis like "white men don’t always win, how the powerless can find justice, and about how a murderous demon and a law-abiding detective can be soul mates." had me hooked. what I took for granted was the "violent fantasy" part earlier in that same sentence.

This gave me the same feeling that watching clips from Saw does, violence for violence sake. Especially later in the book, upon my initial read through my brain unconsciously had me skim over a page, but I ended up going back having realized I didn't know what happened to that dude. I have REGRETS, that image will be haunting me at least for the rest of the day, quite possibly for the rest of my life. (Additional Content Warning for Possible Animal Abuse? Like what the fuck was that.)

I am all for Morally Gray characters, this crossed that line. It didn't even really feel cathartic in the way that revenge stories often do. And I have to wonder if some of that comes from the fact that this is a man writing a story about Women's Revenge.

DNF: 18%

I was cautious going into this just based on the Synopsis, white people writing indigenous people, has a history of being done poorly and honestly I was already weary just from the line "a tattooed Native man, who wasn’t supposed to be alive"

But I recalled enjoying, Of Wicked Blood, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It wasn't worth it, The poor taste in my mouth from the synopsis was a warning for the things to come.
The writing was dull at best, it was hard to continually stay engaged.
Then we get to this new dude, grilling Cat about her name. Specifically questioning the fact that is Hopi in origin rather then from her Gottwa. But then the text makes it sounds like her mother's name Nova is from her Tribe's origin but if you search google for a translation such as this you find a lot of "In Native American the meaning..." as well as posts saying the meaning "Chases Butterflies" has been previously misattributed to Hopi Origins.

I am white so I don't feel like I have the right to speak on whether it's right or wrong to create a new Native American tribe for the purposes of a story or not.

I will say that it wasn't in reality necessary, you want to tell me a bunch of white people came to inhabit the Wisconsin in the early 1800s that were fae, stuff happened, they "died", got buried and forgotten about. Something that is completely feasible in the course of 200 years.

A very sweet and beautiful children's book about death and loss. That I felt approached it in a very good way and tackled a lot of the thoughts I recall having when my great grandmother passed when I was younger.

The story of an underdog, slowly overtaking the competition.
It does feel like a slow read overall though and the art doesn't really help to maintain focus.

"Hades, God of the Underworld, is seeking a successor. The prize? His fabled horn of plenty, source of boundless wealth. But to winnow down the applicant pool, Hades has devised a series of challenges as deadly to hopefuls..."

Lets be real, like me, most people won't finish reading, or at least won't really process the rest of this synopsis. Meaning that when the twist happens you are just as startled as our protagonist. Which honestly adds to the comedy.

This is both incredibly informative and incredibly hilarious read. That I would definitely recommend.