This is an incredibly enjoyable YA urban/low-fantasy! Holly Black is one of my favorite authors in the YA genre, because it reads with the ease of YA, but not necessarily the tone of YA, which is amazing for when you’re looking for a nice, easy, fun read. The characters here are incredible, the plot is fun, and I LOVE her take on vampires. It’s refreshing, it’s dark, and it’s fun. Very much enjoy and highly recommend. 

The hype surrounding this book is absolutely deserving. I usually take these hyped books with a grain of salt — I haven’t read one yet that’s lived up to my expectations. Until I read this book. An INCREDIBLE, AMAZING fantasy standalone that really does stand above the rest in terms of quality, storytelling, characters, plot, and world building. It had me from page 1 to page 830. Absolutely INCREDIBLE. 

This was just… gross? And not in a particularly creepy way, honestly. I just didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed other extreme horror, I guess? It’s well-written, and I’m sure it’s for somebody, but it’s just not for me. 

I seriously loved this book and it TOTALLY snuck up on me! All of the main characters are insanely lovable, and the plot was incredibly engaging. My only gripe is that it was a little slow to get into, but still amazing! 

This was an enjoyable enough book, but only because I went into it having read the blurb AND with the knowledge that this book was written by a man. And holy shit did it read like it was written by a man! 

Honestly, though, the world building in this was pretty impeccable. I’m not a huge urban fantasy guy, but this was incredibly rich in terms of giving you just enough to understand what was going on, but not so much that it was confusing or super difficult to understand. Did I particularly like Jake as a main character? No. But I did like how this took the werewolf mythos, and if you’re a fan of werewolf lit, I’d definitely recommend. I will be reading Tallula Rising, for sure. 

I really enjoyed this! An incredibly informative, but appropriately lighthearted, book about sex and sexual health! I appreciated the way Hannah prepared and presented the information, and this feels very accessible to me. 

I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. 

But it’s about 200 pages too long for the plot, which, in those 200 pages, meanders uncomfortably slowly. I really only liked Lukazs and his brothers, the Wolf-Lords, because they were the only characters who were really fleshed out. Ren fell flat. Kozsmar fell flat. The plot twist or two at the end felt rushed and unpredictable (but in the bad sort of way, like the author hadn’t really had much planned and needed something for shock value. I appreciate the Eastern European influence. But that’s about where it ends. 

I enjoyed this book, more than I even expected to. It was horrific — which is to be expected, considering it’s a historical fiction about the Rape of Nanking — but it was incredibly well written, haunting, and mysterious. It’s going to sit with me for a while, I think, especially this: is ignorance forgivable? 

Incredibly poignant. Highly recommend. 

I wish I enjoyed this book more than I did. 

It was beautifully written, and in a way that very much belied it’s folktale roots. However, this book as NO plot whatsoever. I understand that it’s supposed to show the cyclical nature of the fairytale, to have this kind of timeless feel, but it is about the least fun thing in the world to have a story that meanders on with seemingly no purpose whatsoever. 

I am a huge fan of Russian folklore — I find it all incredibly fascinating. But this? Was not the way to do it. 

This was actually INCREDIBLY insightful and intriguing! A very good read!