essjay's Reviews (635)

It was fine. Some odd phrasing that would occasionally take me out of the story, but overall a sweet little sapphic love story. 

13y/o said 4½, so that's what I'm rating it. They couldn't answer what kept it from being a 5 or what made it better than the others. 

I do think this one brought up a lot of questions that we haven't had answered yet, but also introduced my very favourite character (which I had completely forgotten about her being in this one before re-reading). 

Despite the fact that there was nothing new or noteworthy about this book (I think the clearest comp is Rainbow Rowell's Attachments), I didn't want to put it down. 

I still think Middlegame was the strongest of this series and probably would have been just fine as a standalone. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy this and Seasonal Fears, but I do think that McGuire gets too caught up in showing us that she knows exactly how everything works. Like, okay, I get it, you've obviously thought this through, but maybe I don't need to read it all? Both of Middlegame's sequels suffered from the same problem, where fully the first half was set-up and explanations for everything, but I don't need all that, just tell me the damn story. 

Gory and delightful, everything you could want from Hack/Slash. 

I 1000000% requested this ARC bc of that cover and the mention of Yellowjackets in the blurb. It was...not at all like Yellowjackets, sadly, more like that newer Pretty Little Liars spin-off that I never finished watching. 

And I almost didn't finish this book. At about 15% I was ready to DNF, didn't touch it for a few days, and then came back and read the rest in mostly one sitting. Honestly, part of why I continued reading was bc of how annoyed I got with the descriptions of coastal Louisiana (basements? in-ground pools? on an island in Black Bay, which is losing islands constantly due to global warming and rising sea levels? come on, now), but then I turned my brain off completely and just tried to enjoy what was left. And I mostly did.

 It was fine. But I still think Yellowjackets is a fucking terrible comp. 

Probably more like 3¾, but am bumping it up bc the colours were fucking stunning and I am shallow like that sometimes. 

The problem sometimes with the self-contained GN is that they can either contain too much story for their relatively short length, and would be better served as a mini-series, or that they drag along bc maybe they should have been part of an anthology or released as a one-shot. This is the latter. 

I didn't dislike reading this, and will probably even buy it for my kid bc they will LOVE the art, but the story itself was fairly predictable and dragged on for more pages than it needed to. 

13y/o: How did I rate the other books?

Me: [reads off list]

13y/o: Oh, this one is a 4½, FOR SURE. 

Me: What makes it a 4½?

13y/o: It's...I...it just IS. 

Me: Fair enough. 

I know this one isn't a lot of people's favourite (and it's not mine either), but I'm glad we re-read it. It's a lot stronger than I remembered it being, tbh. I was never a horse girl, but I always kind of admired them. And I love Regan. 

I'm such a sucker for horrific health and wellness stories, but there wasn't a whole lot new in this one. There were some seriously skin-crawling self harm descriptions that I'll be seeing when I close my eyes for a while, tho. 

Fun while I was reading, but ultimately easy to put down and I will probably forget a lot of it within a few months.