This is an incredibly fun, trope filled light novel. In fact it is my first light novel and I can totally get the appeal. Very much like reading some classic ff.net fanfic. It is not the best written story , not even close, but it is a fun book to take you away from the real world. The world building was fun, the romance was fun, I love falling in love with the villainess right alongside Rae because at first I Did Not Get It but by the end I was also In Love TM. Can't wait to read book two and, hopefully, watch these two smooch!

So this is a solid 3 mostly because I didn't hate it but I didn't love it. I think it was perfectly fine, the romance was fun, the side characters were fun, but a whole lot of nothing happened and then things happened very quickly. Things dragged out when they really didn't need to and lots of threads were sort of left dangling which could have been avoided if bits in the middle hadn't taken so long. I think the handling of depression and anxiety could have been handled better and there were lots of moments that felt thrown in there without much thought. Overall, however, I still really liked the romance and thought it was a fun, trope heavy story that knew what it was about. I love the side characters and I love the funny moments and I like that it spoke a lot about the struggles of being out in the spot light I just wish it had been paced and plotted a little better than it was.

I liked this but I'm not sure I loved it? I like the idea of related short novellas of young, artistic, Black girls, I like the setting, I like Lux as a person, I like where the story seems to be going. But I think the length is doing the book a disservice. Maybe I would have liked it better if all the books were one with each part a different girls POV, or maybe I just wanted there to be a stronger resolution in the story in general because it feels like it wrapped up pretty quickly and with some ends that didn't tie off as well. I know that some of those loose ends are because the story is ongoing but it still felt very jarringly sudden when the end did come. I will probably read more in this series to get a better idea of how I like it.

I loved this collection. A lot of the stories were ones I hadn't encountered. The ones I did know were beloved stories or excerpts from his novels. The Problem With Susan, a Study in Emeral, I Cthulu, How To Talk To Girls At Parties, and the chosen parts of Anansi Boys and American Gods are all some of my absolute favorite bits of his writing plus I found even more to love of his works. This is perfect for long time fans or people who want to know if Gaiman is right for their reading tastes. I will say that it is extremely hard to list the trigger warnings in this book, in no small part because I forgot to list them all as I found them. I always tell folks to use caution because even some of my favorite works of his have pretty large trigger warnings. The Problem with Susan is maybe the first time I remember falling in love with a Gaiman work besides Coraline but it also includes mentions of bestiality, sexual assault and a few other triggers that I can see being hard to read. So use caution when approaching but please don't let it keep you from at least giving this book a try. Gaiman is such a diverse and creative writer and I've never seen that more clearly than in this collection. Looking at it, I don't think I disliked a single story in here which is almost never a thing for me. It's great, he's great, I adore him.

I don't know why I try. I don't know why I FUCKING try with these books. If ANY of you see me putting another McManus book on my Currently Reading or TBR shelf slap me with this review and remind me that I hated every single word of this book. I mean the phrase "two fake identity reveals" alone should have been enough to send me packing and I finished this book almost entirely out of spite and a need to hit a book count goal for the year. Read an adult mystery that isn't a bunch of incredibly boring mostly rich mostly white teens just being bland as all hell while solving mysteries. Literally the worst scooby doo movie is better than these books. Thank you for coming to my rant.

LOOK THIS IS CUTE! This is freaking adorable IDK what else you want from me. I don't have deep thoughts I just have uwu face like the goddamn disaster queer that I am. I am full heart eyes at these baby gays, ok, let me live! 

I. Am. Obsessed!!!! Expect a fuller review of this one on my blog at some point soon but I LEGIT love this. I wanna just read twelve more of these novellas PLEASE

I mean I would say I'm disappointed but that would imply that I was expecting anything from this. This has aspects of The Phantom Tollbooth and elements of Narnia with the impact of neither and the writing style of someone significantly less interesting. This book felt so much longer than it actually is, dragging in parts while going far too quickly in others. It is trying far too hard to be a quirky kids book in the vein of Aru Shah or Morrigan Crow and instead just feels like an adult who thinks they know what kids read. I literally had to go reread things because I was falling asleep while trying to read this book. I'm so bored by this book it almost isn't enough to make me angry at it, just tired.

Ok... Time for me to have an Unpopular Opinion about a book again. This book wasn't doing it for me for a couple of different reasons. The historical part of the book was the best part of the book with the other two POVs feeling sometimes like a completely separate book which, in a lot of ways, it is. I was not engaged in the modern story at all. It was also about fifty pages too long and had several false endings. On the one hand I love the happy ending on the other it feels extremely neat and clean. I am not Romani and I cannot speak to the accuracy of the depictions here but it felt like a lot. Also, I understand why it happened, but a Romani character pretending to be possessed by a demon doesn't sit right in my stomach. Again, I get why it had to happen, but it's a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I think mostly I just was underwhelmed by the plotting and the story. I love seeing diverse historical stories and I really wanted to love this. At the end of the day, though, it just wasn't for me. 

TW for this book include: racism, homophobia, transphobia, racial slurs, torture, drowning

You can find my full review here: https://bookedwithgrace.wordpress.com/2021/01/14/the-complexities-of-self-in-a-girl-like-that/