goatsrsexy's Reviews (604)

Darkly is a really cool story!!  It has all the darkness, magic, mystery, and misunderstood teen outcasts I love in this kind of book.

The story is based around a woman named Louisiana Veda who once made super intricate and artistic horror themed board games (Darklies) who died, but decades later her company hosts an essay contest for an internship. There's all kinds of mystery and intrigue surrounding the woman, the games, and especially a game she made that went missing.

Arcadia (Dia), along with six other teenagers all with unusual names, wins the internship but quickly finds out it's not what she expects. The interns end up playing a scary version of one of the games, and starts uncovering all kinds of crazy secrets about Louisiana's life and her games.

I had a great time reading this book, I flew through it! Trying to figure out what was going on was so much fun and I didnt see the end coming at all. There was a good level of darkness mixed with light heartedness and the main characters were all very well written!

Thanks so much to Penguin Teen Canada for the advanced copy!

I've always wanted to read Dracula but I struggle with the prose in books from this time. Reading it in small email chunks was a great digestible way to get through it and I found myself disappointed on days I didn't get an email. 

I really liked this book! The characters were so sweet and interesting. I especially loved Mina and Renfield.

I really enjoyed this book, it was different than I expected but not in a bad way.

I just couldn't get into this

I really need to stop reading GR reviews BEFORE starting a book because I almost got talked out of reading this. Idk why I do that. But I am sooo glad I decided to give it a shot because this book was a huge win for me I just loved it.

I'm always a fan of unlikeable female characters and I love horror so it's really no surprise that I liked this book. I understand why a lot of people didn't. Maeve is a horrible person and also extremely full of herself in the most irritating way, but I love that about her! I'm not sure what it is that draws me to these types of characters but I always love them.

Coincidentally, I'm listening to American Psycho right now which obviously was partial inspiration for this book (so far I like Maeve a lot more than Bateman but that's no surprise since I love women). I also liked the mentions of the underground man, another deeply disliked character who I like. I swear I'm not like these characters hahaha I guess I just like how free they are with their thoughts and actions, how they don't care at all about what others think of them. I also relate a lot to the misanthropy I guess, while I personally love people, I have my moments where I feel the opposite and it's soothing to see that in books.

Anyways, this book is VERY dark, gory, violent, and uncomfortable..Most people won't like it. But if you generally share my taste in books and you like extreme horror and unlikeable characters I would give this a go and don't let the 1 star reviews scare you away!
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I really enjoyed this book! It's not my typical genre, well, I do read a lot of horror but not a lot of gothic horror for some reason. I don't know why because I always enjoy it. I buddy read this book with one of my favourite internet friends and the person who introduced me to storygraph 🥹🥰 Buddy reads are always so much fun and a good way to read books you wouldn't normally get to. 

I've heard a lot about T Kingfisher but this is the first of their books I've read!

The first half of the book was a little bit slow for me, I liked the set up but my mind did wander a bit as I was reading... But as we got more into the story and things started to get creepy I was really liking it. At first the scary stuff was very subtle but the last third went in a direction that was definitely a lot more out there than I was expecting (in a good way!!). This was a perfect October read that I'll definitely be recommending to others.

What a strange, creepy, hopeful little story. This book was recommended to me by storygraph and I chose it because it had an interesting cover. It was a very interesting but uncomfortable story about a small community where all the women have died from a fungus but a new kind of life comes from their body. It's creepy and strange with a fair amount of body horror. Overall I liked it quite a bit and would recommend it as a quick read to those who like weird books!

I absolutely love Ava Reid's world building. It's the thing I've most admired in all her books, and I've read them all. Of course all books borrow from other things and her first two books especially were heavily influenced by folklore, but I was curious to see how she would tackle a retelling (I also love retellings in general, I think it's a really cool thing to take an already loved story and make something new out of it).

I'm not really a Shakespeare person, for one I struggle with the prose, for two I'm not really about reading something that's meant to be watched. So I'm not super familiar with the story of Macbeth, I do know it, but not well. So I went into this book not really recognizing characters or anything.

Another thing I love about Ava Reid is the way she writes angry, fed up women. Roscille is definitely that, living in a world where women are property and in constant danger, she's trying to figure out how to survive. The story took some interesting turns that I wasn't expecting and I really loved it. This is definitely my favourite of Reid's novels so far. 

I wasn't sure going into this book what I was going to think. It's a romance (barely), it's very sex heavy which is not really my thing, but it's full of toxic unlikeable characters which is definitely my thing.

The love story between Teddy and Noa felt painfully realistic at times, and I really identified with Noas self destructive inclinations. Teddy is a controlling asshole pos but also a loving parent and extremely generous. Noa is pushing 40 but acts decades younger, has a ton of baggage but clearly just wants to be happy.

It was interesting to read a book like this where the toxicity is so apparent but you're still kinda rooting for everything to just work out for everyone. The characters felt very raw and real so it was easy to root for them. 

This book had a lot of eroticism but for me was not 'hot', the sex scenes just made sense for the story. They are graphic and probably people who look for this kind of thing in a book will get something from them, but if you're like me and not really a fan of them, don't let them deter you from giving the book a try. I would also say you can skip/skim them if you want without losing much plot.

This book is translated from Hebrew as well, which comes across in the story, it's translated well but you can tell the dialogue wasn't originally English. I think it added to the book overall.

And advanced copy of this book was given to me by Simon & Schuster Canada.

A silly little filler novel but I enjoyed it