haileylouise's Reviews (167)

An easy, fun, and cliché read to get you out of a slump.  I wish there was a bit more character development outside of their relationships to each other. For what it is and what I expected, it was decent. 

Thank you for being my childhood
Live your life and be happy now :')

I really enjoyed this book! I loved getting to read about a queer Guyanese MC and seeing how Ash navigates her life after meeting Poppy. It's definitely wholesome to see these two grow closer and grow to love each other throughout the fall and winter. In short, this is a lovely story about grief and love. 

I do wish that there was more of a fantasy element regarding the afterlife and the reapers. Ash is sort of just thrown in and does what she's told, mostly accepting the fact that she is a reaper and reaps whenever Deborah assigns someone to her. There is a lot of hush-hush talk about Deborah having some sort of authority and an even higher authority above her that created this reaping system. And it's very much a case of 'just don't do this or else' when Ash questions what would happen if she broke the rules. 

I also wish Deborah played a bigger role in this story! She did take on a sort of mother-like figure for the reaper girls but didn't do much beyond assignments and keeping up her guard around Ash.

I wish she did find out about Ash and Poppy because it would have caused a lot more tension and revealed a different part of her that we wouldn't have seen before. And it would let us explore more of the afterlife, seeing purgatory, where all of the souls go after traveling with Charon, etc.

Although the story was a bit slower-paced, the pacing really helped with the relationships being developed with Poppy, Dev, and Essen. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a sapphic romance with a lot of love and grief!

I really enjoyed this story! I'm not a huge fan of books that go back and forth between the present and the past, but LaCour's use of such created a wonderfully sad, but loving experience. Marin experiences the death of her grandfather in a traumatic and haunting way, leading her to leave for New York early with nothing on her back to start her new life. She doesn't say goodbye to her best friend, Mabel, and starts this new chapter of her life from scratch. Mabel comes to visit Marin during winter break, asking her to come home to California and be a part of her family. There is a back-and-forth conversation between the two girls, Marin not being ready yet and Mabel wanting her friend back.

It isn't until the very end when Marin is confronted by Mabel's parents, that she makes a decision to accept the love, security, and family being offered to her.

I have waited months to read this book and I finally got the chance with the US version being published recently! I love Nick and Charlie together and seeing them navigate through a rough patch through text as opposed to artwork was definitely a change of pace. I also loved how involved Aled was here while being friends with Charlie. 

Would definitely recommend this after reading all of Heartstopper and This Winter! (Solitaire was more focused on Tori while Nick and Charlie were supporting characters. Whatever happened to them in that book was depicted in the graphic novels or mentioned in this novella.)