Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Just like the first book in this novella series this book deals with a girl that is very smart and ostracized for it. Donna spends most of her time in the library, studying advanced material since she knows everything the teachers want to teach her. Her peers hate her except for one guy, Greg. And then something happens at the beach.

There's a lot of foreshadowing to the thing at the beach, which makes it seem like Donna is far more involved than she actually is, which was quite surprising.

This novella is very similar to the first novella. The one thing that actually makes it stand out is the fact that we get to know more about the school Donna and the other girls will visit. I like how it was tied together, but sadly the part about Spindrift was also the most interesting part of the story.

All in all, a way too quick novella again, but there were some parts that were interesting and it definitely makes me very interested in reading the full book.

Not to be gay or anything, but this was one of the first webcomics that really made me feel that "wow, I'm really gay!" feeling and I'm very glad it's back :)
In this story, Cas just recently joined a new private school. Being the only kids that's there on a scholarship next to Samantha they quickly form a friendship. With her dad working the graveyard-shift he's barely ever home and so Cas spends a lot of her free time at Sam's place, where she lives with her sister Deanna and her sister's girlfriend Benny. But something weird is going on with that family and Cas isn't always sure if everything Deanna and Benny do is really that legal.
I'm very excited to see where this webcomic will take me. I'm also very happy that it's finally updating again. I personally really like Sam as a character a lot, she's rather quiet, but also packs a good punch. Cas is quite shy, Deanna is the hot punk girl of my dreams (she's also very protective of her sister and swears too much, I love her!) and Benny, who is very flirtatious.
This webcomic has some really funny scenes where I had to laugh out loud, but now that more and more of the story is revealed the stakes are slowly upped and there's also quite a lot of creepy stuff going on, that I'm very excited to know more about.
I also adore the art style.
All in all, I'm really happy this webcomic exists.

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book has a really interesting premise, but it never really lived up to my standards (except in some short moments). What really bothers me is that is marketed as a stand alone Paranormal Fantasy. It doesn't feel like a stand alone. The ending reads much more like the first book in a series and I have to admit that I would like to book more if it has a sequel. More on that later.

Anyway, there used to be a powerful Coven. The Order of the Willows. It had been founded by slave women who wanted to be able to protect themselves. One day somebody started killing them, one by one, until somehow the murderer is stopped. By then nearly half of the Order is dead. Now the murders have started again and Willow is revived to help stop whatever is doing this. The only problem? She has never heard from the Order and she definitely does not know any magic.

Willow could be a really fascinating character since she has empathic powers, but sadly this part of her powers is only very rarely makes use of them. It is said that she is the Blessed Willow, which means she is all-powerful like the founder of the Order, but this is never fully shown. We are actually only told right in the end and then bam, it's over? All of this would make much more sense if the story was set up to have a sequel.

The same thing happens with the Order in general and its history. I wish there had been some more explanation about the Coven of Witches, even though in this story we actually only had two witches who are still alive at the beginning of the book and barely any explanation about how the Coven worked except a few hints and there. (Why is there no sequel?!)

Most of the side-characters are just boring sadly. A lot of them feel like flat stereotypes and they fall into a lot of tropes. "The beautiful mean-girl", "the best friend", "the mysterious Love Interest", "the wants-to-be-famous-but-is-laughable High School Girl" and so on. Like this, I couldn't fall in love with any of them. The only side character I did care about was Ms. Collins and I wish we had gotten to see even more of her. She is a great teacher to help Willow with her powers.

Another huge disappointment for me was the Romance? They meet when Matt saves Willow from drowning. Throughout the novel they meet again and again, but already after having talked two times, Willow feels this weird connection between them (her empathy acts up and she feels really good when she's with him, I mean seriously looking at him is described as if the sun comes up after they have talked three times (one time was just a sentence or two)). Now either this is Insta-Love (bleh) or some magical connection thing that is never explained. Both are bad. In another scene Willow is angry at Matt and he just ?!? grabs her and kisses her mid-sentence. Stuff like that is not cute. And of course, afterwards all her anger was -poof- gone. I don't know why such scenes always have to be in YA novels. For me, it really cheapens the romance because if they can't talk about small things without trying to fix it, than how will they deal with bigger problems later on in their relationship? Idk, it's a huge pet peeve of mine. Otherwise, their romance is interesting, but also underdeveloped.

Now I really liked the mythology. It was mostly judeo-christian inspired, with reciting the Psalms for certain spells, but there were also chinese kitchen-elves (which honestly felt really gross for me?!? I mean?? the elf was invisible cleaning personnel that had been sold with some pottery??? eww) and trolls and greek goddesses. But witchcraft was also just science? I don't really know what to make from this concept. I liked the idea, but some parts of it didn't make sense, while others were quite lovely. But like many other things in the novel it felt... hazy and not fleshed out enough.

There is also a scene in the book where whole paragraphs repeat, but since I only have an arc I'm guessing it will be fixed before the publication.

All in all, I once more have to repeat that this story has a really interesting idea, but it lacks development in pretty much all stages, so I can't rate it higher.

But I also want to mention that I just have an arc, and for some weird reason the page count on goodreads is much higher (over 140 pages more) than the page count on my e-reader, so it might be that the arc copy I have has already been edited and expanded.

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

First off let me preface my review with trigger warnings I wish I had before I started the book. There's pedophilia mentioned, there's child sexual abuse mentioned and there are some scenes that are just really uncomfortable in that manner. There are also some comments that are really victim-blame-y and it's just really gross.

Now to the story. I really wanted to like this book. And I do like it. But I don't love it. Partly at fault for that is the confusing writing style for sure. For a long time, I was not sure if those ghosts were real or imagination or how they really fit in the story. The magical elements got so mixed with reality that often I just couldn't be sure what was really going on.

Despite that, I really grew to love Sante and Cobra and Cat. I also absolutely adored Scarlet.

And there's already another one of my problems. We are told that Scarlet was abused since she was really young and so she is very angry at her abuser. Despite this, she is only ever regarded as a burden or something to fear and mistrust by Sante and Cobra. Cobra even once questions how they can be sure that she's not actually in love with her abuser and wanted it. I had to stop reading for a while at that scene. While we do not at that point know about all of the abuse she faced (like the fact that he's a pedophile that gave her parents access to drugs and gambling so he could easily get their daughter), I already suspected that her past was a really dark one and felt that she deserved way more compassion than she got. 

And while I absolutely loved that Cat was immediately there for her, she was immediately there for her. They hadn't even exchanged words and already acted as if they were in love. This was explained by some mystical and short-lived soulmate idea, but it didn't make a lot of sense. In quite a lot of the relationships in the story there was only telling and barely any showing, which really made it unbelievable for me as a reader.

But now back to the main story. The mythology of this story is really amazing and I just wish there had been a bit more explanation.

Jess has a bird that watched over her since she was a little girl called Priss. Their relationship is really great and I really enjoyed reading about them. Another thing I liked was the circus life as it was really well taught and super interesting.

There's also a lot of political commentary in this story, but it switches its focus quite often. Corrupt cops, refugees being herded off into camps if they even managed to get to shore and weren't drowned, human trafficking, sexual abuse and living off the grid. And while I really enjoyed reading about all of this, in the end, it just made the story more confusing. It is simply too short to have such a huge plethora of issues in it and so none of them are fully fleshed out and I think the story suffers for that sadly.

There's also the repeated use of g*psy. And while Sante once mentions that it's a bad word, she keeps using it. Here's a review about why it shouldn't be used by non-Romani people. Another thing is that apparently barely any of these people have real names? Or at least Sante never learns them, as she refers to one of the adults in the circus constantly as Midget-Man. Get it, because we have to see that he's a Little Person. Ugh. While other characters at least have okay code names, this one really rubbed me the wrong way.

All in all, this story has amazing folklore, interesting characters, and a quite interesting writing style. I think I would have enjoyed this story more if I had gone into it wanting to read magical realism and not a contemporary. However, there are also quite a few problems with this book and so I couldn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped I would.