Oh super love this series, would only love it more if these were longer. A fun, dark fantasy mystery that manages to be equal parts fantasy and horror. I love putting a semi-steam punk world but setting it in Cairo, I love the world building, I love the complex lady characters kicking ass and taking names. I would literally read a twelve book series set in this world, please give it to me at once!

This is such a boring book that I don't actually have anything to say strongly about it. Like I don't... I just finished it and I can barely think of anything to say about it. This is a rice cracker of a book: you read it and don't feel anything. Like I can't even be mad about this just so underwhelmed. The plot is contrived, the characters are flat, the writing is incredibly bland. It's just a ... kinda of bummer of a book because it's not even bad enough to truly hate it.

These are nice essays. i like the personal spin on the natural world, I like the bits and pieces of her life as it crosses with nature. I think there are times when it's trying too hard to draw parallels between the two. I think I would have liked a hand full of these just on their own the whole book itself just felt like a bit too much. Still, it's a good book. I don't hate it, I just don't love it. 

I'm going to need to think about this one for a bit. I didn't dislike it but I'm having a hard time dissecting what it is that put me off of it as much as it did. I suspect it is mostly character/love interests that didn't do it for me.

Oooof. Look I'm not as mad about this as some other reviews have been. It's... It's fine. It just reads like middle school fanfiction instead of a published, fully realized novel. The writing style, the plot, the characters, they are just all a little too simple, a little too obvious, a little too on the nose. It's cute, it's fine, it is just that "fine" is about as nice a word I can come up with. There's not much meant in the story plus the homophobia displayed by the majority of the school is also a little... outdated. It reads more like when I was in high school than what I've seen today. Not that homophobia isn't legit still a thing, only that schools, even private catholic schools, can't really get away with that level of it anymore. IDK it's more or less a CW tv show put in a book but with more canon gays. Not for me.

A dark story with a very morally gray queer woman is just what I needed after a lot of disappointing horror this year. Not overly scary but super tense with a very dark message that I cannot help but love. I enjoy the way the ending played out, I enjoyed the way the horror unfolded around the reader. I would have loved for this to be longer but I also think it was a good pace, it's just I never wanted it to end. Overall a really great, short read for people who like Penny Dreadful or Crimson Peak.

I don't wanna spend a whole lot of words on this one. Short version: Not spooky enough, plot twists make no sense, didn't feel like any of this book actually meant anything or led to anything interesting. How I crave a good haunted house story and yet again I get this garbage. I'm super disappointed in this rice cracker of a book (all puff, no substance)

Ooof. Maybe I read this too close to finishing Written in the Stars, a different P&P wlw retelling but this was just not it for me. The characters were too flat, the writing itself was subpar, it just wasn't a hit with me. I didn't root for the romance the way I'm supposed to, I didn't think way it was updated was particularly interesting other than making both of the leads women of color. It just felt bland, like a book that had all of the ingredients right but just didn't mix well in the baking. Really a let down, tbh. Skip this and go read Written in the Stars which does it a lot better.

Wow! This is a powerful story. It reminds me a lot of a book I read many years ago called Anne Frank and Me which had a similar "go back in time and experience a tragedy that occurred during WW2" story. I am glad that this particular topic is getting more attention because I didn't know much about it until college. I felt at times that the pacing of the story wasn't as great as it could have been, that it moved either too slow or too fast depending on the moment. But I also loved how much of it was tied back into what is going on politically today.  Overall I think it's a solid story that could have used a bit of a better pace but was otherwise really good. 

This was a fun, body positive, sex positive story that I wish I had loved but was mostly just bored by. Maybe it's that I found the characters, particularly the love interests, a little too much for me. By that I mean we keep getting told how great these guys are but there are very few moments when I was actively rooting for the romance. Mostly I just kept thinking "eh, Liv could do better." It just wasn't doing it for me, I kind of spent a lot of time sighing heavily at Liv in that way you do a little sister who is a little too focused on boys. Still, it was a fun, not-too-deep read which I am glad of because books about black girls don't need to be that fucking deep all the time.