The Hazel Wood: ★★★.5
The Night Country: ★★★.5

If you haven't read The Hazel Wood yet, probably don't read this review??

Well, I didn't get my wish that Alice wouldn't be the main focus of this book and it would instead be about all the other, much more interesting stories as they figure out life after the Hinterland. But oh well, I still enjoyed this one, although not as much as The Hazel Wood.

So what's going on here?
After the death of the Hinterland, all the stories and wanderers within have to deal with life in our world, without magic and all the things that made them them. For many, this is as good as a death sentence. For others, it literally is. Someone is murdering the Hinterlanders, someone with ice in their hands that leaves everyone believing it's Alice herself. So Alice leaves it up to herself to clear her name and solve the mystery before anyone else gets hurt, but things are a lot more complicated than she ever thought possible. In another world, Ellery Finch is on another journey, with the hope that it might lead him back home and back to the girl he left behind.

What I loved
As with my review of The Hazel Wood, my absolute favourite thing about this series is the world. I am in love with both portal fantasy and fairytales, and this series gives me both of those deliciously served up on a silver platter. While the world building in The Night Country wasn't as good as it was in the first book, as this was more focused on plot and characters, it still was enough to hold my interest because, and I'll talk about this more in the next section, I'm really only into this series for the world and not at all for the characters and plot. Melissa Albert has created such a wonderful world that I wish I could dive into and live in.


What I didn't love
Again, same as my review for the first book, I really don't care about the characters and the plot very much. The side characters that I loved in the first book weren't in this one unfortunately, and the new characters that were introduced didn't feel fully developed to me. I had a hard time connecting with anyone, or caring whatsoever about any of the stuff happening to them. I enjoyed the parts with Finch world hopping with that one girl who's name I completely forgot (and who was pretty much completely irrelevant?? What even happened to her after that thing at the end? I literally have no idea where she went omg I don't remember), but that wasn't a huge part of the book. I really wish this book had more focus on Finch, he is way more interesting, ESPECIALLY THAT WORLD WITH THE BOOKS TO OTHER WORLDS?? WHAT???? PLEASE GIVE ME A WHOLE BOOK OF THAT!! Anyways. That about sums it up

Overall thoughts
I did still really like this series, it just wasn't what I hoped it would be. There is a whole lot of room for spinoffs though that could potentially give me what I wanted. So hopefully one day Melissa Albert will write those, even just a book of short stories would be cool. I know the Tales From the Hinterland is going to be released at some point and I'm hyped for that, so maybe she'll do a book of Finch's stories too. I can only dream!!

Read for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon - Potions: read a book under 150 pages (see my O.W.L.s TBR video here)

This is a tentative 4 stars, it’s probably more like a high 3 star but whatever

I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would after reading reviews. A lot of reviews I’ve seen talk about Red Hood not sitting right with them, and I totally understand where that feeling is coming from but I don’t think I agree? This might be somewhat spoilery so heads up, but it’s also the premise of the book so? Anyways, those reviews I read talked about how it’s wrong for Bisou and Sybil to be killing these men, and if they were killing men then yes of course it would have been. But at the time of the killing, the men were literally wolves seconds away from murdering someone else; if not for the main characters killing them first, an innocent woman would have died. So of course I agree with the reviews I’ve read that the answer to violence is not more violence, but in this (fictional) case I don’t think what the characters were doing was wrong. It’s not right either, but it’s not like there were a whole lot of other options at the time. That’s my take on that *shrug*

But onto the book itself, I found Red Hood to be a surprisingly compelling read. I really love fairytales but haven’t read all too many modern retelling, and I don’t think any of Little Red Riding Hood, so this was something completely new for me. I was skeptical in the beginning with the overly descriptive writing style, the second person POV (which I don’t hate but I do find kind of jarring), and the heavy emphasis on this child’s blooming sexuality. But I found once I started skim reading over the unnecessary descriptions that I was actually really enjoying this book, so much though that I’ll actually consider reading Arnold’s other books. I love anything to do with a found family, and this one really hit the mark for me. I love me a bunch of women loving and supporting each other unconditionally

My favourite character was definitely Sybil, especially because of her relationship with Bisou and her friends. I just found Sybil’s entire presence as a character to be very peaceful, even though she’s also a total badass

Plot and pacing were good for the most part, although I found the ending to be kind of lacking. I like the direction it took, but I feel like one more chapter would have made things more satisfying. There was also one thing about the writing that kept getting on my nerves, and that was the constant “I don’t know how I know this, I just do.” It felt like rather lazy writing, like the author didn’t feel like taking the time to figure out the logistics of something and just chalked it up to being mystical or instinctual. Which I guess in a fantasy you are a allowed to do, but it was kind of frustrating that nothing actually had an explanation, and the reader is just expected to take things at face value without being able to ask question. I was left with a whole lot of questions at the end of this book that easily could have been answered if the author took the time to figure it out herself. But alas, I’ll just have to deal with my unanswered questions

Anyways, while this wasn’t a perfect read by any means, I did still like it quite a book and would recommend it for those looking for something quick. It is definitely worth the read and talks about some extremely relevant topics to today’s social climate

Side note, there is a whole lot to be discussed about the lack of representation for trans women and women of colour in this book about violence against women. I feel like Red Hood should have at least touched on that topic at least one. However, I am not particularly good at articulating and don’t have concrete facts, so I encourage everyone to go read the reviews that talk more in depth about this topic

*Sigh* I’m so disappointed in this. The plot was pretty good but the characters! Dear god what happened

So what’s going on here?
Daughter of the Siren Queen picks up shortly after the events of Daughter of the Pirate King. It follows Alosa and her crew of badass female pirates (now with a few men on board) as they travel the seas in search of the legendary Siren treasure with her father. However a seed of doubt is placed in Alosa’s mind when she hears a rumour that her father has actually been manipulating her for her entire life, although she is unsure if she believes it. After a shocking revelation, Alosa must choose between the destiny she has always believed she wanted, a life ruling the seas behind her father, or choose one for herself that would leave him behind.

What I loved
The plot and pacing of this was

Cute is not the right word to describe Murderbot but that's all I can think of so we're going with that.

This was so cute! I've been wanting to explore adult sci-fi lately but am a little intimidated by it, so I thought this might be a good intro since it's short and kind of silly. I really enjoyed it! I'll definitely be reading the rest of this series (and probably soon, considering how short they are). It's a very quick read, I really like the narrator for the audiobook, and the internal thoughts of Murderbot are hilarious and weirdly relatable. My one issue is that we didn't get to know the other characters very well, so it was a little difficult for me to understand Murderbot's motivations for caring about them the way he does. But otherwise this was a solid read and I can't wait to read more about this adorably awkward little killing machine

Read for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon - Ancient Runes: read a book with a heart on the cover (see my O.W.L.s TBR video here)

I... am so conflicted about this. It was a very entertaining read, not perfect by any means, but definitely a lot of fun. My overall enjoyment of The Paper Magician made me want to give it 4 stars when I was getting close to the end. But then I actually got the end and read what was in the fortuity box, thus discovering that Ceony and Emery are at some point going to actually enter a relationship together, and immediately wanted to lower my rating to a 2 at the most

Why oh why did this have to have romance in it

If this was just a case of Ceony having a crush on her mentor, that's fine. People get crushes on their teachers all the time. I myself had a huge crush on my 1st grade teacher. It happens, it's normal, no big deal

What IS a big deal is when said teacher reciprocates those feelings. I don't care that Ceony is of legal age, I don't even really care about the gigantic age gap. What I do care about is the huge power imbalance that these two being in love would bring forth. A student/teacher relationship is NEVER acceptable, and yet that is the turn that this book took. Big yikes.

I feel like I wouldn't have minded the romance if Ceony had been his student for a while, had a crush on him the whole time, and then several years after her apprenticeship was done they got together. If that's how the next books play out then I'm fine, but I have a feeling that's not going to be the case

Anyways, onto other things

The plot was decent. The first half was pretty solid, but by the time we got to the third chamber in the heart I was tired of it. It got a little repetitive and didn't feel like it had much purpose to it. It was also a little too convenient that Ceony just HAPPENED to make a guess how to get out of the heart and it was right. I wanted there to be more struggle, more angst, more DRAMA. But everything felt a little too easy. I was never really worried that any of the characters weren't going to make it, which made reading the whole middle feel kinda boring. I feel like I could have skipped the whole part inside the heart and gone right to the end, and not feel like I missed much

I do really like the characters though, mainly Emery. Ceony is ok, I liked her for the most part even if she was a bit bland. But Emery is fantastic, I really enjoyed his character. I hope he isn't near dead in the next books lmfao

Overall, not bad, not good either, a bit problematic but I will continue on with this series

Read for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon -Arithmancy: read a book outside of your usual genre (see my O.W.L.s TBR video here)

This was such a fun read! I had a feeling I would like it and I was so very right, ugh this was fantastic. Can't wait for the next ones!