I want to start off the review by saying that my absolute favourite thing about this series is how firmly the author refuses to hide behind the racist refrain that diversity in regency stories is anachronistic. There's a Black MC; there's a biracial, brown MC; there's a disabled supporting character (whose disability we actually forget about sometimes because it doesn't define his character); and there have been austistic characters. Finding out 

Susan and Eliza were a couple IN THE TEXT. AS CANON. 

instead of it remaining subtext the whole time was the cherry on top.

Death at the Manor is, due to its gothic vibes, an edgier and slightly saucier entry to this franchise. Don't get me wrong, it's still an incredibly cozy mystery novel, just like its predecessors, but it's definitely a little darker than it's older siblings.

I'm still not 100% sure how much I liked DatMs foray into the gothic fields, but thought the mystery was very well done. The Howdunit was pretty obvious from the get-go, but the Who and Why dunits didn't become really obvious until about 60% of the way through. Which is another thing I like about this series; it's hard to guess the culprit based on vibes, like with most other cozy mysteries. We, the readers, have to examine and collect evidence right alongside the MCs. It's great!

I also really enjoyed getting to see things from Ofelia's perspective a little more. We're getting to see her step off of Lily's coat-tails and become an active investigator, and we're also getting to step out of Lily's head and see things from outside her field of view, which is also really nice.

The biggest let-down in this book for me was probably Captain Hartley's absence. His character lends a bit of levity and cheekiness to the cast that no one else quite fills. Not even Ned, though he tries. I think the tone of this novel could have really used some of the Hartley charm remind us of the series' less serious roots. But maybe that's just me. 

 Becky Chambers really just sat down and went "I'm gonna give my readers a comforting hug via book" huh?

There are books that come to you at the right time, and A Psalm for The Wild-Built was absolutely one of those. I've had an incredibly stressful month and a half and this was exactly what I needed. I understood sibling Dex's worries, fears and anxieties about their purpose at a core level, and Mosscap's gentle reassurances were a soothing balm to my soul.

TL;DR: This was short, incredibly comforting, and made me cry. 10/10 

This is super dry, repetitive, and definitely feels like it's gonna have a Classic Terry Non-ending, too. I'm calling it.

This was Pretty Little Liars (but good) meets Gossip Girl meets Get Out. Before I read this book, if anyone had told me that these three things would make a good combo, I'd have laughed them out of the room. But man, the execution on this was sublime.

There's not a lot I can say about this book without giving something away. I think it's best to go into this with as little information as you can.

The only reason I docked half a star was because the characters took a little too long to figure out the WhyDunnit of the big mystery, and honestly, in the year of our lord 2022, it should have been their very first guess. 

 I know this book was written for literal children, but Pennypacker didn't need to pull her punches quite so much. This was supposed to be a poignant tale about a boy and his animal companion learning that it might be time to go their separate ways, as well as a story about the unseen victims of war, and it was NOWHERE near as gut-wrenching as it should have been.

Instead the middle was meandering and too-long, and the ending was too-quick and unsatisfying. 

This could have very easily been a 3 / 3.5 star rating, but alas, the MC didn't actually solve this mystery using the power of deduction. She solved one, I'll give her that, but the mastermind behind the CENTRAL MYSTERY OF THE BOOK just walks up to the heroine and ... monologues. Confesses to the whole thing, for no goddamned reason. They weren't even a suspect lmao.

I'll probably still read the rest of the series (It's an easy read and I enjoy my cozy mysteries, sue me) but if you want to read a cozy mystery series that follows a widow in Regency England that does the mystery better, then please consider reading Katharine Schellman's Lily Adler Mystery. 

 DNF at 51%

98% of the 51% I read of this book was torture porn. Not a good sign, no?

Save yourself the trouble, friends. 

Having only read Kingfisher's horror novels before, I was wary about picking this up because I thought it wouldn't work for me. Boy, was I wrong.

Kingfisher's fantasy writing has all the charm and heart of her horror novels, and was such a treat to read. This is the kind of book you pick up when you still want to read fantasy, but are tired of the dark, bleak, gruesome worlds. This isn't to say that Paladin's Grace is without its fair share of bloodshed, murder, and general Bad Stuff - but Kingfisher's writing gives you the sense that there's always hope.

Fantasy, but chill. 

 The more I think about this, the madder I get.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth follows Cat who, along with a small group of "friends" travels to an old abandoned, supposedly haunted mansion in Japan. Everyone in the group considers themselves to be ghost-chasers - you know, the kinds of people who purposefully visit haunted sites in hopes of seeing something supernatural. Also the bride has wanted to get married in a haunted house since she was 10. As one does.

As you can imagine, shit hits the fan pretty fast. (I mean, what did you expect, getting married in a haunted mansion, ya know?) But as delicious as this set up may seem, this book doesn't really do anything with it.

One of this book's biggest letdowns was Khaw's purple prose-y writing. Do not get me wrong, I can appreciate purple prose when used right - and at the very beginning of the novel, it did seem like it WOULD be used right. In the correct moments, Khaw's flowery narration was beautiful and helped dress the setting really well. But this is a horror novella. You can't be describing someone's death and comparing it to constellations. Or maybe you can, but you should really be reigning yourself in, because if every other sentence in your novella is as ornate and melodramatic then you are ruining your tension and urgency. Khaw did not reign themselves in.

It's a shame. This book went down really easy - I never at any point felt like I was going to DNF, or like it was a chore to read. But it was so disappointing . There were... threads. Little bits of info that could have been used to craft a really meaty, tense, thoughtful horror short about messy people making messy decisions and having to suffer the consequences of it. But ultimately the paranormal aspect went absolutely nowhere, there was a character just annoyingly quipping through most of the climax and ADDING to the lack of urgency/suspense, and we were left with a group of wholly unlikeable, flat, cliched characters who didn't care about each other, who the heroine didn't seem to care about in a way that felt tangible to us, and who made some truly idiotic decisions for no fucking reason we could determine.

The story I was imagining in my head when I read the "Suenomatsuyama nami mo koenamu line was 10000% better than the one I was given. Sad.