”outside our doors
let us be beautiful
on our own terms.”

This was a lovely collection of poems focusing mostly on trans liberation and especially trans joy, and imaging a world built for us. While it didn’t blow me away, I really enjoyed reading this

This was such a wonderfully whimsical story, with all the gruesome detail of a classic Grimm fairytale. Unfortunately I found the narrator for the female MC to be incredibly dramatic which definitely took away some enjoyment, I wish I had read it physically instead. The vibes were immaculate though!

3.5⭐️

Not as good as the other books in the series, but still a satisfying conclusion and a whole lot of fun!

2.5⭐️

I still adore this world but since this was a sequel there was less world building and more character development, and unfortunately the characters are my least favourite part. The main character is not crazy, naive, and honestly pretty annoying overall. The side characters are cool but I feel like they are reduced to their romantic aspirations most of the time rather than their actual personalities. I’ll be surprised if I end up picking up the third book

If you like Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, then you will like this one too! It has all those wonderful elements of found family within a wayward group of very different people, it is wonderfully queer, and has the added flare of the circus, heists, and mob bosses. This was such a fun read and I’m so glad I finally got around to it! I did find the ending wrapped up a little too quickly, but otherwise this was a phenomenal read and I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for more releases from this author

Definitely a weird book. But it was quietly beautiful, and thought provoking, and achingly sad. Not what I was expecting but still really enjoyed it

3.5⭐️

So there’s the thing. There are a lot of things that I disliked about this book, possibly more that I disliked than there are things that I liked. To name a few: Kamran is an asshole who can’t seem to go more than three sentences without insulting Huda’s weight. The side characters sound like bumbling idiots every time they speak. The fact that two men are making the decision to pass around Alizeh like cattle while she’s unconscious is not once challenged, even by Alizeh herself. There was virtually no world building in terms of the magic system or the entire Jinn community. The main character plus both love interests are royalty in charge of entire kingdoms, and yet there was very little working going on from any of them. It was a lot of telling us about all these dramatic things going on, but it felt like mostly gossip rather than actual action.

However, I literally couldn’t put it down. Every moment where I wasn’t able to read this, I was thinking about it. I listened to the last chapter like 3 times just because I didn’t want it to be over yet. I’ll be very impatiently waiting for news of book four, even though up until the last 15% or so I wasn’t even sure if I would want to continue the series after this one. But that ending??? I need the next book asap!!