howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

#1 Letters to the Lost ★★★★★
#2 More Than We Can Tell ★★★☆☆

After the absolute delight that was Letters to the Lost – and, even more, considering how much I adored Rev’s character in that book – I thought there was no way this book could be anything less than a home run for me. Unfortunately, I think I may have overestimated this one. I tried to write a standard review of this book, but honestly, there’s just not that much to say about it, so instead, I’ll give you a list of what I liked, and what I didn’t like.

That makes me smile. "I do what I can," I whisper.
"Shh," he says. "I'm texting with someone."
I grin and slide my fingers across the screen.

→ what I liked ←
• We get to spend a lot of time with Rev and learn more about his backstory, including some insight into his life as the child of an abusive pastor, and how religion and abuse have shaped him into who he is today.

• Emma offers fantastic insight into the life of a gamer girl, as well as the life of any female content creator in the gaming stratosphere, as we see her suffer harassment, unfair treatment, and unrealistic expectations – all of these fueled by the fact that she doesn’t hide her gender identity from the world.

• With Emma’s harassment comes a painfully realistic view of how men in the gaming community tend to treat women. A misstep isn’t even required from her to warrant lewd and horrific comments from the men playing the game she has created; her existence alone, her “intrusion” into the space these boys have called their own, is plenty to bring these attacks upon her.

• We also get some “nice guy” portrayals in a character who belligerently convinces himself that an act as simple as basic politeness to a woman means she somehow owes him her time, attention, and money.

• My favorite part of the book: we get to spend a bit of time with Declan as Rev seeks comfort and advice from him. In many books that I’ve read where characters had a cameo in a later story, it felt like the original characters had been changed to somehow fit this new “side character” mold, which is always really jarring, but Brigid Kemmerer doesn’t put Declan through that in the slightest; he’s still 100% who I knew and loved in Letters to the Lost.

I haven't seen him in ten years, and one little note has me craving his approval.

→ what I disliked ←
• Am I imagining things, or does Brigid Kemmerer refuse to write enjoyable female characters? In Letters, Juliet had a terrible attitude and lashed out constantly, but at least her behavior was usually almost justifiable; Emma, on the other hand, is absolutely horrible to everyone she meets! She spends the entire book casting petty shade at her “best friend”, verbally attacking Rev for no reason whatsoever, and throwing herself a massive pity party.

• The weird love triangle was so unwelcome; despite Rev giving her every reason to like him, Emma has an unhealthy fascination with this online stranger. I could understand if there was ever any actual growth between the two of them, but the bulk of their conversations are just Emma repeatedly whining about her parents while Ethan offers quips like “It could be worse!” and “At least it isn’t as bad as my parents!”

• Emma’s attitude towards her best friend constantly revolves around saying rude things about her friend’s YouTube beauty channel, and Emma belittles the struggles that come with that hobby/business ceaselessly, which is not only catty and some serious girl-on-girl hate, but it also re-enforces this “geek” vs. “hot girl” dichotomy crap.

• Despite a tremendous amount of build-up to Rev’s issues with his father, the ending felt really… bizarre? Lackluster? Anti-climactic?

• I never found myself rooting for Emma and Rev, at all. In fact, I spent most of the book just hoping Rev would run far, far away and find someone who actually respected and cared for him.

• There’s a male side character who gets picked on with homophobic remarks, but we learn that he isn’t gay; instead, he has suffered horrible sexual assault from multiple men in his life and is being taunted for it. Despite his trauma apparently being widely known at the high school he attends, no real time is spent on getting him the help that he needs or stopping the assailants from continuing to do this to other boys, and the whole thing just felt like this poor child’s rape was being used as a plot device.

• We get to see Juliet for, like, five seconds, and in that five seconds, she does something kind of rude and intrusive, so, you know… not a great bonding moment – again, it strikes me as odd that she’s so poorly written, considering how great Declan was and the substantial amount of time we get to spend with him in this book.

When people dismiss him as crazy, I know they don't understand. He wasn't crazy. He was... deliberate. Calculated.

→ final thoughts ←
As you can see, unfortunately, my dislikes were much more prominent than my likes in this one. I wanted so desperately to love this book that, when I reached the 30% mark or so and realized there was no way it was redeeming itself enough for 5 stars, I honestly considered DNFing it and saving myself some of the disappointment. I’m not saying 3 stars is a terrible rating – there were still things to enjoy about Rev and Emma’s story, for sure! – but when I compare it to Letters, it just feels like a totally different author wrote this book.

All quotes are from an unfinished ARC and may not match the final release. Thank you to Bloomsbury Children’s for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

More often than not, if I ran across a character who shared my race and gender in a book he was a gross stereotype, comic relief, token sidekick, or, depending on the genre (I’m looking at you, science fiction, fantasy, and horror), there to die so the real hero could fight another day.

I love anthologies, and I love getting the opportunity to promote authors of color and diverse books, so as soon as I learned that the co-founder of the We Need Diverse Books movement was editing this anthology, I had to grab it—and I am so happy that I did.

Before I get into the full breakdown, I’d like to give shout-outs to a few of my favorites from the collection, which were Why I Learned to Cook by Sara Farizan, which gave me all of the happy cutesy feels; One Voice by Melissa de la Cruz, which broke my heart in the best way; and Super Human by Nicola Yoon, which reminded me that even bullet-proof superheroes are capable of having their hearts broken by this world.

→ Eraser Tattoo — Jason Reynolds ★★★★☆ ←
“No. We were five. That ain’t count. You told everybody you loved them back then. You used to kiss your juice boxes after you drank them and tell the straw the same thing.”

What an absolutely precious beginning to the anthology: a teen couple swapping eraser tattoos and memories before one of them is uprooted to another state with her family. Not only is this story hilarious, sweet, and a little bit of a tearjerker, but it also takes a moment to show the microaggressions black individuals face in even quiet moments, like the general disregard and rudeness the characters are treated with by the white couple moving into Shay’s former home. I already knew I’d love anything Jason wrote for this collection, but this was honestly the most wonderful beginning to the book.

Rep: black

→ Meet Cute — Malinda Lo ★★★★☆ ←
That was the problem with being queer. You should never assume, but if you didn’t assume, you had to ask. And asking directly was so hard to do.

Okay, no lie, this geeky little f/f story about a fandom convention just about made me squeal because one of the girls is cosplaying as a black Agent Scully, and I grew up the biggest X-Files fan, so… I was automatically dying over the little inside jokes and references. I’m not a Trekkie at all, but Malinda Lo goes easy enough on those bits that I didn’t feel like I was “missing the joke” or anything, and these girls are just so damn cute and geeky. There’s also some important internal monologuing about how hard it is to be a queer person in the dating world, especially when you don’t know if the person you’re into is queer, too! While the title for this story is perfect, it’s not insta-lovey at all, and overall, my geeky little queer heart was just so here for this one! ♥

Rep: Asian-american, black, f/f

→ Don’t Pass Me By — Eric Gansworth ★★★★☆ ←
“This color,” I said, tapping the box of Flesh on his desk. “Its name doesn’t cover everyone.”

After how cute and sweet the first two stories were, this one took me by surprise with how heavy and sad it was: a narrative of a seventh-grade Native boy in a school full of white kids in the 70s, where he has to deal not only with microaggressions and outright racism, but also the fact that of the few other Native kids in his school, many of them are light-skinned and “passing” enough to shun him, too. He stands up for himself and it is such an empowering story, but it also hit me really hard on a personal note. My grandmother (rest her soul) was half-Native, and not white passing. I remember stories she told me about feeling excluded because of her skin color or her features, and how disconnected and erased she felt from her culture in a country that has tried so hard to forget Native people. It absolutely breaks my heart that Native people have been cast aside so much, and for so long, but stories like this—and like hers—truly need to be told.

Rep: Native

→ Be Cool for Once — Aminah Mae Safi ★★★★☆ ←
Biohazard: may cause heart to burst.

This wasn’t my favorite story so far, but it was super cute, and it perfectly captured the joys of concert-going for music-loving teens, so that alone was fantastic. It features a Muslim girl and her best friend, who run into the main character’s crush at a concert and she’s forced to face down her long-held secret feelings for him. Not only is there some cute lesbian rep on the side with her best friend, but the whole scene is really sweet and humorous. There are several references to Islamic practices, too, which I found so interesting and precious. ♥

Rep: Muslim, Japanese, f/f (side characters)

→ Tags — Walter Dean Myers ★★★★☆ ←
“We got our tags on the wall and people can see we were real, and they’re thinking about us. But we ain’t resting because we got to stay ahead of people cleaning the walls.”

This is a unique piece of the collection, as it’s actually a play, and man, did this one hit me hard. It’s a story of a few dead young black men, tagging walls in the afterlife as they discuss their memorials, how they died, and how they keep their own memories alive with their tags. There’s a devastating twist at the end, and a lot of subtle commentary on the way a corrupted and damaged “justice” system terrifies and warps the psyches of marginalized individuals, particularly black men. When I finished reading the story and realized where I knew the name from, and remembered that this author actually passed away a few years ago, it added some sort of extra heartbreak to think that even in his seventies, Walter was still having to write about the same injustices and cruelty he’d witnessed his entire life.

Rep: black

→ Why I Learned to Cook — Sara Farizan ★★★★★ ←
“You never apologize for taking up space, Yasaman.”

Okay, this might have been THE cutest, sweetest, and happiest story so far. Yasaman is a young Iranian bi girl who wants to introduce her girlfriend to her immigrant grandmother, but has been too scared to do so. In hopes of preparing herself for the big event, she has her grandmother teach her how to cook vegetarian versions of authentic Persian foods, and the entire story is just filled with grandmother/granddaughter bonding and important lessons about never apologizing for who you are and what your culture is. With how much I miss my own grandmother, I’m such a sucker for grandmotherly figures in stories, so this actually brought a few happy tears to my eyes! ♥

Rep: Iranian, f/f

→ A Stranger at the Bochinche — Daniel José Older ★★☆☆☆←
He let another silent prayer rise inside him, the one said to call on one’s warrior spirits before battle, and we gathered in the thick air around him.

Sadly, this is the first story I haven’t enjoyed in this collection, and I genuinely did not like it at all. It’s a sci-fi short, but it doesn’t feel like a short story; instead, it felt like I was just reading a passage taken out of context from a larger novel. There’s no explanation to any of the action going on, you’re just dumped right into the center of it, and I had no chance of connecting with the plot or characters in any way. There’s war, rival groups, guardian spirits, and suddenly, aliens? It didn’t work for me.

Rep: Latinx

→ A Boy’s Duty — Sharon G. Flake ★★★☆☆ ←
What’s a boy’s duty to himself?

Unfortunately, this historical fiction story made two in a row that I just couldn’t quite connect to; while the last one was “too much”, this one was just a mixture of boring and plotless. A young man sits in a café, observing the people around him and thinking about his father’s farm, the thieving boys he’s friends with, and his dreams of joining the Navy and becoming a sailor during WWII. There’s just not much of anything going on, the characters are mostly wholly unlikable, and I wasn’t a fan, sadly.

Rep: black

→ One Voice: A Something in Between Story — Melissa de la Cruz ★★★★★ ←
I wanted America to want me because I was already a part of the fabric of the country.

My god, you guys… this story is heavy and relevant and so, so good. The narrator is a Stanford student whose family moved to California from the Philippines when she was a child, and she lives in constant fear of deportation. She talks about how she didn’t know her documentation wasn’t proper until she applied for college, and she had to jump through hoops to be allowed to stay, including forfeiting her rights to a scholarship she had worked hard to earn. The plot of the story follows her throughout a few days at her college in which racial slurs are spray painted on buildings and vehicles, and she laments the fact that her white-passing boyfriend isn’t able to understand why she feels so unsafe at their school. It’s just a tremendously sad and realistic depiction of something that so many people in the US are going through right now, and if there is one story in this collection so far that I find to be the most relevant to 2018’s sociopolitical climate, it’s this one.

Rep: Filipinx, black, latinx

→ Paladin/Samurai — Gene Luen Yang ★★★☆☆ ←

This little story is told through a comic strip, which is a neat addition to the anthology and a fun break from the standard text formatting. It’s about a Japanese-American teen who faces erasure from his group of friends while playing Swords and Spells (essentially D&D). While it’s a cute short, I wish more had taken place to address what legitimately jerks his friends were being, instead of it being swept under the rug at the end.

Rep: Japanese

→ Catch, Pull, Drive — Schuyler Bailar ★★★★★ ←
Beneath the surface, I am not the girl everyone says I’m supposed to be—in fact, I’m not even sure I’m a person. I’m just swimming. I am a singular action, proof that I am alive and powerful.

Oh my god, I love this story so much! It’s a first-person narrative of a trans teen who is at his first swim meet after coming out to his team and all his friends. There are a lot of transphobic terms and homophobic slurs in this one, so trigger warnings abound, but it’s such a beautiful narrative. It meant even more to me once I found out that the author is a swimmer himself, and more than that, is the first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer ever and the first publicly outed trans men to compete in any NCAA men’s sport! He’s kind of my new hero. The last thing I want to point out about this story is that it also features some amazing parental love and acceptance regarding his coming out, which was so sweet. ♥ (Side note: This is the first story in the collection to not make any reference to the protagonist’s race, so I didn’t mention that in the “rep” section below, but the author is Korean-American.)

Rep: trans

→ Super Human — Nicola Yoon ★★★★★ ←
Always the wrong place. Always the wrong time. A country that did not value his life.

Okay, this story… I knew Nicola’s story would be good. I don’t think her novels are perfect, but she has a way of writing that is always capable of hitting me hard, and I expected this to be no exception, but I didn’t think it would break my heart so much. It tells the story of a seventeen-year-old black girl who is sent to attempt to reason with X, nicknamed the “Black Superman”, who has decided to forsake his humanity-saving tactics in favor of wiping out the population instead. When she learns what changed his mind, it’s absolutely shattering. I’m choking up just writing this review, thinking about the society that I live in and how utterly and completely broken this system is. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, only because this is a story that you need to soak in, to allow it to hit you in the chest the way it did for me, but I will say that it was the perfect ending to this anthology, and I will carry it with me.

Rep: black

FINAL AVERAGE RATING: 4.0/5
My star ratings for each individual story averaged out to a perfect 4 out of 5, but honestly, this is the best anthology I’ve read in my life. It is so poignant, and haunting, and gorgeous, and solidly written, that I have to bump it up to 5 stars. It deserves nothing less. ♥

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Crown Books for Young Readers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

Even the gods have abandoned us out here.

If you follow my reviews, you know I’m a big horror fan, but what you might not already know is what a sucker I am for horror/sci-fi genre-blending and spooky stories set in outer space. Courtney Alameda is known for her horror writing, but she interlaces the terror aspects with the sci-fi, futuristic, technology side stunningly.

We were supposed to wake up saved, or not wake up at all. That was the deal we made with fate.

→ Tuck ←
The narrative of Pitch Dark alternates perspectives between two protagonists – one from the “past”, and one from the “future”. Our first introduction is to our “past” character, Tuck, who has been in cryo-sleep for a few hundred years, only to awaken to a spaceship full of corpses and monstrosities. He’s hopeless, angry, and hurting, but has such a good heart – a quintessential “teddy bear” character, at your service. Unfortunately, despite how lovable he can be, Tuck never felt three-dimensional to me, and his lack of intricate development was a huge drawback.

“The madman with a box?” I ask. “Bad Wolf? We have a lot of running to do?” They both look at me as if I’m the one who’s lost my damn mind. “All righty then. Allons-y.”

→ pop culture references ←
On the other hand, my favorite thing about Tuck was easily his pop culture refs. I make no attempts to hide my usual annoyance with these sorts of things, because they frequently come out forced and unnatural, but Tuck’s are done phenomenally and are so cute. The above-quoted Doctor Who reference was easily my favorite, but most of all, I adored how frustrated he got when people didn’t catch his references! (I relate so much.)

To all the girls who write their own histories, who resist men telling them to “stop,” and save themselves in the end, this one’s for you.

→ Laura ←
Our “future” perspective comes from Laura Cruz. She’s a teen Latinx girl with archaeologists for parents, and she is positively brilliant and fierce. She takes nobody’s mess and is determined to take care of herself at all costs, relying on no one to save her. If you enjoy hard-headed, angry, capable heroines, Laura’s your girl. I appreciated her so much, and my favorite thing about her was the social commentary she was able to provide on the current state of society.

I’d like to say that in the last few centuries, humanity’s grown past these compulsions in a moral sense, that we’ve become better. Nobler. Wiser. But we haven’t.

→ racism ←
As a woman of color, Laura explains that a few centuries haven’t been enough time to rid the entire human race of its bigotry. There’s been so much reproduction between races, it has caused a sort of ethnic mesh in most of society, to the point where fully “white” individuals only keep their white skin by going to great lengths to avoid any biracial reproductivity. Because of how deliberate being a white person in Laura’s world is, most individuals assume that entirely white individuals are simply clinging to Nazi-like ideals of the past. This was a really refreshing take on the idea of a world in white cultural and racial diversity is normalized, but was also a truly interesting theoretical prediction for the future of our world.

“That’s the folly of the human heart. We make macro decisions based on micro motivations.”

→ social commentaries ←
Besides the discussion of racism, there’s a lot of observation of how we treat the planet, as we are informed that the reason humans left Earth in Tuck’s time was to escape the mess they’d made of it and the fact that the planet had been utterly drained of resources. Even the creatures on Tuck’s ship are explained to have been created not by some zombie virus or magical mutation, but by the after-effects in breathing and drinking in too much pollution from the Earth era.

They’re not aliens or zombies, just our own mistake.

→ fear factor ←
I know a lot of my followers are hesitant to pick up horror stories, so I wanted to go ahead and let you guys who aren’t horror fans know that, in my opinion, this is an extremely approachable read for individuals who don’t typically enjoy horror. It’s so heavy on the sci-fi aspect that it doesn’t read like your usual horror story, but there are some gruesome descriptions of mutated creatures, so if your stomach is easily unsettled, you may want to proceed with caution.

This book is inspired by the Aliens film franchise, and I would say that it felt very similar to those in terms of the level of horror and “grossness” achieved. If you enjoy those films, I think you would enjoy this story, too. This would be a good time to warn you that there is a scene in this book that comes with major warnings for trypophobia. As someone who has a mild case of trypophobia, the description in that scene was really nauseating and I had to skim past it, but it does give you a bit of warning before it goes into detail.

I wonder what I’d do with such a lonely boy, one who carries a broken heart in his chest and pretends it beats the same as everyone else’s.

→ romance ←
Finally, I want to touch on the only other thing that didn’t catch my eye much in Pitch Dark: the blossoming relationship between Tuck and Laura. You see it coming a mile away, but towards the end, I felt like it became oddly forced. They were a great pair for each other and the chemistry was there from the start, so I thought it’d be a home run, but at the end, I almost felt like, “Wait, that’s all?” I don’t want to give any sorts of spoilers, but I’ll just say that the romance was the main reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5.

All quotes are taken from an ARC and may not match the final product. Thank you so much to Feiwel & Friends for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

His heart had been a boy’s heart, throwing itself against his rib cage with each set of white gloves for mass.

→ Roja – Anna-Marie McLemore ★★★★★ ←
What a killer of a beginning to this collection. Anna-Marie writes so beautifully, and this little magical realism story will be sure to please anyone who enjoys her novels. It follows a young woman with a curse of poisonous rage, seeking to free her lover from the local police before he is executed as a prisoner of war. It is so lovely, and lyrical, and even takes time to touch on colonialism and racism. There’s a lot packed into only a few pages, and it was just a truly incredible way to start the anthology.
rep: trans, Latinx

Clara Elizabeth Byrd had been married twice by the age of sixteen and she had decided she had no taste for it.

→ The Sweet Trade – Natalie C. Parker ★★★★☆ ←
A young woman decides to escape her own wedding – the second one, by the way – and make out for a life of her own, but finds an unexpected stowaway on her boat: another young woman, also escaping a wedding. This story was so precious, and fun, and I loved these girls so much. They had this undeniable, imminent chemistry and I would totally read a full novel about their adventures in piracy. I mean, come on – queer pirate girls being adorable. Can we make this happen?
rep: f/f

→ And They Don’t Kiss at the End – Nilah Magruder ★★★★☆ ←
A mid-70s story of a young black asexual woman, trying to learn how to explain her feelings to the boy she thinks she might like. This was such a fun, short little story – it felt like it only lasted two or three pages, and while I’m not ace and can’t speak for the rep, it seemed so positive and warm that I couldn’t help but love it. I was especially fond of the fact that Dee didn’t feel the need to be embarrassed by who she was in the end – she recognized that it wasn’t her who was messed up, but the people who teased her for who she had been born to be.
rep: black, Filipino, ace

Maybe sinful desires can be cleansed through prolonged exposure, like colors faded from a canvas by hanging too long in a sunny corner of the house.

→ Burnt Umber – Mackenzi Lee ★★★★★ ←
A young man is known for being the best apprentice in his painting class when it comes to sketching nude women, but things change for him when the new model comes in – a young man he’s been harboring a secret crush on for some time. In typical Mackenzi Lee fashion, this one was absolutely adorable, comical, and so much fun to read. Her writing style in the short gave me such a throwback to Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue that I immediately wanted to grab it from my shelf and reread it.
rep: m/m

→ The Dresser & The Chambermaid – Robin Talley ★★☆☆☆ ←
Chambermaids and dressers aren’t supposed to intermingle, but when a new dresser comes to the palace, fresh from the countryside, socializing with the chambermaid isn’t the only thing on her mind. This honestly should have been a really adorable, lovable little story, but it’s too emotional for having taken place in what is roughly a 12-hour time frame; as it stands, it started to look like a heavy helping of insta-love in the making. Besides that, the story had nothing particularly exciting or interesting to offer, and – don’t get me wrong, I’m saying this as a queer woman who adores normalization in stories – the idea that so many queer couples were so openly accepted by their peers in the 1700s made it difficult to maintain suspension of disbelief.
rep: f/f, m/m

→ New Year – Malinda Lo ★☆☆☆☆ ←
The daughter of two Chinese immigrants faces life with a curious interest in other women, as well as working through her family’s fears of deportation or unfair treatment. I honestly wanted to like this story because I’d heard Malinda Lo was an incredibly talented author, and I loved the idea of this family of immigrants being proud of their culture even in a country that fought back against them at times. Unfortunately, the story was so boring and incredibly disjointed. It shifted from one focus to another without ever tying up any of the endings, leaving it feeling as though there was no actual plot to it at all.
rep: Chinese, f/f

→ Molly’s Lips – Dahlia Adler ★★★☆☆ ←
A girl’s memory of where she was the day that Kurt Cobain died, and the ways in which she and her best friend – and object of her quiet affections – honored his memory and life. I’m so torn on this story, because, on one hand, I’m thinking that this is a YA collection and most of today’s teens honestly don’t care about Nirvana, or Kurt’s death, or listening to the narrator spout off obnoxious facts about which album was best or worst. On the other hand, the writing was short, but adorable and sweet.
rep: f/f

→ The Coven – Kate Scelsa ★★★★☆ ←
In 1920s Paris, a young woman is led by her girlfriend to meet a witch who claims to be able to help clear the “fog” from her mind. The writing was truly lovely in this one, but the plot was just okay. I think it was the sort of story that would’ve benefited from being a little bit longer and offering a little more explanation to everything, but it was still a cute little story.
rep: f/f

→ Every Shade of Red – Elliot Wake ★★★☆☆ ←
A Robin Hood retelling with more than a few twists up its sleeve. I’ll be honest: the bulk of this story was incredibly beautiful, but boring as hell. I mean, if you have ever wanted an example of incredible prose that tells no story at all, this short’s exactly your source – but the incredible representation and the bittersweet ending were enough to make it mostly worth its while in the end.
rep: m/m, trans, disability, POC

“That is the secret to survival. Teach fear to those who taught you to be afraid.”

→ Willows – Scott Tracey ★★★★★ ←
A young man faces the terrors of being an oddity in an 18th-century Massachusetts town, hellbent on drowning witches. This was one of my favorites of the collection so far – the writing is lovely, but more than that, it’s confusing and dark and utterly captivating. The main character discusses at some length having had past lives stuck in his head, and mentions having identified as female in the past but as male currently. His thought processes are tough to follow at times, but are truly a delight to read.
rep: trans spectrum, m/m

→ The Girl with the Blue Lantern – Tess Sharpe ★★★★★ ←
A starving girl’s desperation to feed herself and her father leads her into an unlikely friendship with a spirit protecting a river full of gold. This was my first time reading anything by Tess Sharpe, but I’d heard such good things about her writing, and I wasn’t disappointed! It was such a sad, sweet little story, and I was so pleased with the ending. These two girls are just the epitome of sweet little cinnamon rolls and I would love to have learned more about them both.
rep: f/f

→ The Secret Life of a Teenage Boy – Alex Sanchez ★★★★★ ←
Hot summer afternoons are the perfect setting for two boys getting to know one another (and themselves). If you follow my reviews, you already know how I feel about insta-love, or anything that even remotely resembles it – it’s usually more or less a deal-breaker for me – but it’s so adorable in this story that I couldn’t even be mad, because it’s so clearly a portrayal of a young boy and his very first experience with another guy, and accepting his own sexuality. It was so sweet, and his family is so loving, and I enjoyed every second of it.
rep: m/m, Cuban

→ Walking After Midnight – Kody Keplinger ★★☆☆☆ ←
When a former childhood actress gets stuck in a small town overnight, she makes an unlikely friend with a young waitress who recognizes her. This one was cute, and I enjoyed the demi rep, which is something I don’t see very often, but overall, left me feeling a little “meh” about it. I think a lot of it is due to the fact that the story felt to me like it relied a lot on the 50s Hollywood era aesthetic, which has never appealed to me, but if that does appeal to you, I think this could be a great story for someone who’s more suited to it!
rep: demi, f/f

So what kind of girl am I if I have no one to kiss on the brink of the world’s demise?

→ The End of the World As We Know It – Sara Farizan ★★★☆☆ ←
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, the end of the world is looming ahead, and it’s the perfect time for rebuilding bridges. I loved the fact that the narrator of this one was Turkish, and I enjoyed how casual and normalized the two girls’ sexualities were (one bi, one lesbian), but the story itself didn’t do much for me. There was so little build-up and what was there, wasn’t anything to root for or swoon over. I think the only reason this got 3 stars instead of 2 from me was because I’m a 90s baby, and the Y2K theme was so familiar and fun.
rep: Turkish, f/f

→ Three Witches – Tessa Gratton ★★☆☆☆ ←
A 16th-century girl is committed to be imprisoned by nuns, as punishment for her lust after another woman. I was hesitant to even read and review this story, in light of recent events concerning Tessa Gratton, but I reluctantly decided that, if I was going to review the ARC, I should review each of the stories and not skip any outright. That said, the writing in the beginning of this piece is beautiful, as Tessa’s typically is, but the plot was incredibly boring and the ending feels disconnected and unfocused.
rep: f/f

→ The Inferno & the Butterfly – Shaun David Hutchinson ★☆☆☆☆ ←
A magician’s assistant is forced to make a choice: he can perform the most dangerous trick of his life, or he can seek out the secrets behind a rival magician’s most infamous trick. I like stories involving magicians, but typically there’s some rhyme or reason behind their tricks, and we’re privy to at least the surface of that. In this story, whatever isn’t explained away by actual magic is brushed off with the narrator’s insistence that it would be a betrayal of his boss. Breaking the fourth wall is fun, but in this case, it felt like a lack of commitment to the theme. Beyond that, the characters, plot, and dialogue were all just rather uninteresting.
rep: m/m

Rosa was a summer girl, and I was a winter girl, but that fall we made magic.

→ Healing Rosa – Tehlor Kay Mejia ★★★★★ ←
A young woman’s abuela is a healer, but when she passes away, the girl is forced to take up her tasks if she wants to save her beloved Rosa. This is a gorgeous, lyrical magical realism story that reminded me very much of Anna-Marie McLemore’s writing. The author has a debut novel releasing soon and I’ll certainly be picking it up, as this was such a lovely, sweet story – and, much like all of the best magical realism tales, I can tell you all day long how much I enjoyed it and what a fantastic finale I thought it was, but the best thing you can do is experience it for yourself.
rep: Latinx, f/f

→ final thoughts ←
Averaged out over the 17 stories in this collection, I gave it 3.4/5 stars, but I feel perfectly comfortable rounding up to 4 stars because I enjoyed a few of these so thoroughly that I wished I could have given them more than 5 stars each. If you enjoy historical fiction, queer fiction, or both… what else do I need to say? You need this book in your life.

All quotes come from an unfinished ARC and may not match the final release. Thank you to Harlequin Teen for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

#1 The Butterfly Garden ★★★★★
#2 Roses of May ★★★★☆
#3 The Summer Children ★★★★★

I have positively adored this entire trilogy so much, and this was the perfect conclusion, even if I am sad to see it draw to a close. While the books do not follow the exact same plot line and probably could be read as stand-alones if you so desired, I do strongly recommend reading them in their publication order!

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was afraid of change. She went out bravely into the world anyway.

If you’ve read these books before, you may remember that book 1 centered on Vic, and book 2 centered on Eddison; in book 3, we finally get to see things through the eyes of Mercedes Ramirez, the 3rd FBI agent in the original trio. Not only do we get to spend more time with the gang, we also get to know Agent Sterling much better, as the events in book 2 led to her being promoted to join the team in book 3. With that backstory out of the way, let me say that—while I love Vic and Eddison to no end—Ramirez had my single favorite perspective of each of the books.

If you were afraid of something in the light, wasn’t it just good sense to be more afraid of it in the dark?

Mercedes Ramirez has been an FBI agent for nearly a decade, but we didn’t learn much about her in the first two installments, aside from the fact that she is Latinx, a lesbian, and has a very personal stake in the business of saving children from their assailants and abductors. In this book, we slowly get to piece together why Ramirez’s job means so much to her—aside from just the comfort of knowing she saved these poor kids—and it’s a rough ride, but a worthwhile one.

It’s one of his gifts: let me distract you, let me fill the silence for you, until you decide there’s something you need to say.

We also get to see a brand new side of Eddison, which I loved; through Vic’s POV, he’s the team clown, and through his own POV, he’s a very serious, older-brother type, but through Ramirez’s eyes, we find the true Eddison, which is something right in the middle. He’s so caring and a total teddy bear, but he’s also fiercely protective, and I loved getting to know him more.

I suppose if you’re the guardian at the gates for a dragon, you can’t help but be pleased when she roars.

I also was delighted to see Sterling come into her own as a character, though it made me a little bit sad that, so far, this is confirmed to be the final book, because now I can’t help but want Sterling to get a POV in a 4th book, too! She’s such a delight and is absolutely brilliant while subverting a tremendous number of gender roles and expectations, and I thought she was a stellar addition to the team.

“I honestly don’t know if you’ve seen Vic when he’s about to rain down fire and destruction.”

Of course, last but not least is Vic, who has taken on a management role but is still incredibly hands-on and more than capable of taking care of his agents, who are practically his kids in every sense but the biological one. He’s always been my favorite because I’m a sucker for the “father” figures in heavy books like this, and he plays the spot perfectly.

In the same breath that people abhor those who break the law, they also love vigilantes with an appealing cause.

As with the first two books, trigger warnings are heavy-handed for this story: sexual assault, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child neglect, child abuse, child death, the list goes on. It’s a tough one to read at times, but the exchanges in between with the agents leaning on one another for support are enough to keep it from feeling overwhelming most of the time. The action never stops, and as someone who is finicky about my thrillers and typically doesn’t like crime thrillers at all, I don’t say this lightly: Dot Hutchison weaves the perfect balance of action, suspense, mystery, and character development to always keep my interest. At this point, I’d read anything she releases, and I cannot recommend this series highly enough!

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Thomas & Mercer for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

Anyone who’s been following my blog for a while probably already knows this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, so it’s no surprise that I loved every second of it, but just saying “I knew it!” wouldn’t make a very good review, so strap yourselves in and let me tell you why I loved LIFEL1K3 so much—and why you need a copy or three of it in your life.

“Look outside that door, and you will see a world built on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day, those hands will close. And they will become fists.”

First, the world-building in this book is exquisite. There is so much history to what has brought the world to the point it’s at, whether it’s the tidbits about the world wars, the natural disasters that led to California’s splitting from the rest of the country, or the havoc that mega-corporations have wreaked upon the world. There are a healthy variety of robots to choose from, too; you’ve got your lifelikes, your logika, your little bots like Cricket, your blitzhunds like Kaiser—list goes on. I loved the fact that we got to learn so much about the array of mecha floating around, as it furthered the sense of immersion to the point where it began to feel like these wastelands could’ve just been a crystal ball into our own futures.

Rule Number Three in the Scrap: Carry the biggest stick.

Not only is everything wonderfully fleshed out, but the aesthetic of this book was flawless. I’m a total sucker for these sorts of futuristic desert wasteland vibes. LIFEL1K3 feels like someone created the perfect blend of Mad Max: Fury Road, Borderlands, and the Fallout franchise, resulting in a wondrous balance of desolation, ingenuity, and badassery. I don’t remember the last time I wanted a book to be adapted into a film this badly, just to watch everyone run around being grungy and cynical and delightfully violent.

“The thought of lighting things on fire does unhealthy things to him.”

On top of the setting itself, the characters are so lovable it’s downright ridiculous. If you’ve read any of Jay’s work before, you may be familiar already with his sense of humor, and it truly shines in this novel. I laughed out loud so many times, and my e-ARC is highlighted to hell and back just for the bits that made me snort. Eve, our main character, is a bit serious and angry, but her closest loved ones—Lemon Fresh, Grandpa, and Cricket—are all a riot and a half, and Kaiser (the blitzhund!) is absolutely adorable.

She didn’t want to die here. She hadn’t liked it much the first time.

I only have one complaint about LIFEL1K3, and while it was not enough to change the star rating, I do think it’s worth mentioning here: there is a running joke in which one of the lifelikes (robot-esque humanoids) is taunted for having lost an arm early in the book, with a couple of crude nicknames being interchanged throughout the dialogue. It wasn’t a dealbreaker for me but did make me slightly uncomfortable, and I always try to give full disclosure in my reviews when it comes to this sort of thing—so, here’s your content warning for ableist remarks! Trigger warnings also apply for child violence/death (in flashbacks), gratuitous violence, and animal death.

“Stronger together.”
“Together forever.”

With that said, this book genuinely just has so much to offer. Underneath the raging violence, snarky quips, running from bounty hunters, fighting off terrifying pieces of machinery, and trying not to die from radiation poisoning (true cert’, can we get these guys some Rad-X?), there’s this really wonderful found family and a common theme that our past doesn’t have to define us. Almost every single starring character in this book is running from their past in some way or another, and I loved watching them each face down their own brand of demons.

This is not the end of me.
This is just one more enemy.

All in all, I could gush for days, but truly, this book is so fun, so suspenseful, so twisty, and so damn rock ‘n roll that you really can’t help but love it—and it’s so hard to put down. I’m already fiending for the next installment in the series, and can’t wait to see where Jay takes us next!

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Knopf Books for Young Readers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

I am a tremendous fan of historical horror, and more specifically, historical horror set in asylums, so as soon as I read the synopsis of this one, I was intrigued. I really had no idea what to expect, but I appreciate that Lukavics has a twisted imagination and tends to go to much darker places than most YA horror authors are willing to explore, so my hopes were very high for Nightingale.

What if this entire nightmare has been a horror show of your own making? What if none of it is real and you’re too far gone to ever be saved?

Thankfully, I was not let down at all by this creepy little read! First, let me say that, if you are a fan of American Horror Story’s Asylum season (season 2), I think this will absolutely be right up your alley. That happens to be my favorite AHS season, and this gave me such similar vibes without ever feeling like it was ripping off the show in any way. What starts off as a horror story in an asylum in the 50s quickly gains a sci-fi element that’s positively bizarre, in the best way.

There was a dead girl in the bed next to June’s.

There isn’t a ton I can tell you about what happens in the book without spoiling things, so I’ll just say that I genuinely enjoyed the progression of events, loved the twist at the end, and found June to be an absolutely fantastic narrator. I loved seeing the world through her perspective, where she’s so unreliable that you can rarely tell what is actually happening and what she’s misinterpreting or possibly making up altogether. There’s a lot of speculative fiction feels to the storytelling here, which I love (but I know spec-fic isn’t for everyone, so if you’re not a huge fan, maybe go into the book preparing yourself).

To have the confidence of such a pathetic type of man!

There’s also a lot of solid social commentary in here. The way the patients at the asylum are treated is terrifying, especially because so much of it is obviously inspired by real events. There’s also a load of sexism present: June is placed into the asylum for being too “unusual”, because rather than cooking, cleaning, and having a family, she wants to live on her own, travel the world, and write terrifying science fiction novels. She’s confused and frustrated by the gender roles placed upon her, and things aren’t made any easier for her by the fact that she’s queer (bi/pan)—and we actually get to see her form sexual and romantic relationships with a man and a woman, the latter of which I found to be so sweet and precious that I couldn’t help but root for them.

At least here, I won’t have to continue living how I was. I won’t have to break myself into pieces just to show them that I can.

I thought Nightingale was a tremendously fun read, and I flew through it in no time at all. I loved the creepy elements, the slow dread brought on by June’s confusion and lack of control, and the surprisingly gore-filled scenes near the end. Like I said, I love how far Amy Lukavics is willing to go, and Nightingale made me want to immediately pick up the older releases of hers that I haven’t gotten to yet. I strongly recommend adding this one to your TBR if you’re a fan of horror with some sci-fi elements thrown in, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

Content warnings for parental abuse/neglect, domestic violence, ableism, mistreatment of mental health patients (lobotomies, shock therapy, etc.), gore, body horror, violence, sexism, suicidal ideation.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Harlequin Teen for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

If you know my reading tastes much, you’ll already know that I almost never pick up a contemporary novel unless it involves one of three things: diverse rep, a heartbreaking learning experience (for the reader or the characters), or a romance so sweet and lovable that I can’t help but get sucked in. It’s really rare that I find a book that has all three of those traits, yet here we are.

I didn’t understand how anyone could be so violently angry with me for something I hadn’t done, so much so that they’d feel justified in assaulting me in broad daylight as I walked down the street. I didn’t want to understand it. But there it was.

This is my first Tahereh Mafi read (unless you count the few chapters of Shatter Me I’ve read so far), and I could not put it down. I sat down late one night with the intentions of reading a couple of chapters before bed, and the next thing I knew, it was 4am and I had just finished it and could not stop crying from this mixture of sadness and grief and happiness and love and just… everything. Tahereh Mafi gave me literally every possible emotion I could imagine while reading this gorgeous story.

I worried that if I spoke or screamed my anger would grip both sides of my open mouth and rip me in half. So I said nothing.

First and foremost, it’s a story inspired by Tahereh Mafi’s own high school life: our protagonist Shirin is a high schooler in the wake of 9/11, shortly after the event occurred, which isn’t an easy place to be when you’re a Muslim girl, the daughter of Persian immigrants who fought and worked their way to the US from Iran, and a hijabi. On top of all of that, her parents move her and her brother Navid constantly, and where the story picks up, Shirin is yet again the new girl whose classmates won’t look past her scarf and skin color long enough to learn more about her: like the music she loves, or the immense value she places on her family and their Persian cooking, or her secret affinity for break dancing.

I was stuck in another small town, trapped in another universe populated by the kind of people who’d only ever seen faces like mine on their evening news, and I hated it.

Obviously, as a white woman from the US, with no immigration in my recent ancestors and no religious affiliations, I can’t begin to speak for the representation in this book; however, Tahereh explains in her author’s note that every bit of it is own-voice (even the break dancing!), and many of my Muslim friends have been raving about this book already. (If you have an own-voice review for this book, please let me know and I’ll boost your review! ♥) What I can say, though, is that Shirin is such an incredible character and I loved the representation. I learned so much, but more than that, I was given just a tiny little glimpse into what it must be like to be a Muslim in a xenophobic, Islamophobic world, and it broke my heart a million times over.

“I’m just—I’m sick and tired of trying to explain to the world why racism is bad, okay? Why is that my job?”

There’s also a running theme of Shirin discussing not only how racism affects her in obvious ways, such as the assailants who attacked her right after 9/11, but also in microaggressions and people being careless despite thinking they had good intentions. It’s so easy to understand why Shirin walks around with walls of thick stone surrounding her, and why it’s so hard for her to let people in—because even the people that seem “good” usually end up hurting her, whether it’s through ignorance or malevolence.

My parents had made sure to make an entirely separate, six-course meal for this friend of mine who’d never tried Persian food before, and they’d sat there and stared at him as he ate, and every time he said he liked what he’d eaten they would look up at me and beam, proud as peacocks, finding in Ocean further proof that Persian people had invented only the best things, including the best food.

I also can safely say that the storytelling itself is among the best of any YA contemporaries I’ve ever read. In between the anger and hurt Shirin lives in, she’s funny, clever, and just an all-around enjoyable narrator. Her family is so lovable (her brother and parents made me smile constantly), the descriptions of food had my mouth watering all the time, and most of all, the romance is one of the sweetest, purest, most adorable contemporary ships I’ve ever seen in my life.

But I knew Ocean and I were thinking the same thing. I could feel it in the subtle shifts of his body. I heard it in his sudden, slow inhalations. In the tightness in his breath when he leaned in and whispered, “Where the hell did you come from?”

I literally highlighted page upon page of Shirin and Ocean’s interactions, no shame. I laughed, I blushed, I cried so many times over how sweet they are together. Ocean is a rare YA love interest who can ride the fine line between being incredibly sweet and eloquent, without ever seeming overly scripted or unrealistic. Shirin and Ocean are the kind of couple that makes us believe in the endless weight of young love, whether we’re in our teens or long past them.

But I had never, ever touched someone and felt like this: like I was holding electricity inside of me.

I honestly feel like I can’t possibly gush enough about A Very Large Expanse of Sea. It is one of my favorite reads of the year so far, and I know it’s the type of story I’ll go back to over and over again because it won’t get old. Tahereh Mafi has earned me as a lifetime fan with this story, I have no doubt, and after reading this, I can’t wait to dive back into the Shatter Me world and then read everything else she ever writes, too.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to HarperTeen for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You might have noticed I have a very specific “type” when it comes to YA contemporary: if it isn’t tragic, I probably won’t like it, but if it can yank at my heart strings and make me cry (and maybe rage) a few times? Well, that’s my idea of a good time. Given how Amy’s last release Now is Everything destroyed my entire life for days after I finished it, I had high hopes for this story, and wow, did it deliver. Amy Giles is flawless when it comes to these gut-punch, heart-wrenching contemporaries that I can’t help but carry with me long after they end.

I have to wonder if other people find some measure of comfort in being around survivors of a shared tragedy. Because I sure as hell don’t.

That Night picks up a year after a shooting in Queens, where we follow two protagonists—Jess and Lucas, both teens who each lost a big brother in the tragic event. Their similarities basically stop there, though; besides their grief, their reactions and the ways their lives have changed since that terrible night couldn’t be more different.

I miss my mother as much as I miss Ethan, if not more.

What we really see a difference in is how each teen’s families have reacted: for Jess, her father had exited her life before her brother’s death, and now it’s just her and her mother. Her mother suffers from such extreme grief and depression that it’s a fight to convince her to even eat or get out of bed, and Jess finds herself being forced to keep the household going while attending school. We watch Jess function as this pragmatist who’s doing everything on her own, doesn’t know how to accept help from anyone, and honestly, it’s a wonder the poor girl can even stay afloat.

“I was always in his shadow, but it wasn’t bad. Now, though… it’s like I’m always standing in the shadow of his ghost.”

On the other side of the coin, there’s Lucas, whose loving parents take care of him, keeping him in therapy and even encouraging his newfound love of boxing to work through his stress and grief. His mother has become this helicopter parent who feels the need to do everything for him and expend all of her energy on keeping him as safe as humanly possible, and when you compare her to Jess’ absent family, it depicts this juxtaposition that is actually devastating. There’s a scene in which Jess is interacting with Lucas’ mother that has me literally choking up while writing this review, because it’s just so painful to watch Jess go through life alone, and I know I’ve said it a million times, but Amy Giles is so good at breaking my heart, I swear.

But what if we’re just that, two broken pieces that end up jabbing and hurting each other and everyone around us?

Honestly, what else can I even say? It’s one of those stories that’s really character-driven, and you have to read it for yourself to experience it. Watching these teens and their families slowly heal, knowing that there’s an empty space in their lives now that can never be filled, but might be soothed, at least, by this sweet, timid relationship blossoming between Jess and Lucas—it’s heavy, it’s impactful, and it’s wonderful.

My mother’s words ring in my ears. “I don’t know how—”
I can only imagine how she was going to finish her thought.
‘I don’t know how to make this awfulness go away. I don’t know how to keep on living. I don’t know how to love you without him.’

One last thing, though—trust me when I say that the grief in this book is drastic, and heavy, and tangible. I cried so many times while reading this because my heart was breaking for these poor families. What killed me the most, besides how badly Jess needed her mother, was her mother’s behavior in the first place. As a mother myself, I can only imagine how easily the loss of a child could put someone into a tunnel so dark, they couldn’t fathom finding a light at the end of it. It’s not okay that she checks out and leaves Jess all alone, but I can’t say that I don’t understand it.

“You’re both so young. The world shouldn’t be this hard for you yet.”

This is one of those stories that I know I will carry with me for such a long time. There are shootings here in the US so often, and we’ve lost so many young lives in recent years. It can be easy to think of those numbers as statistics, but Amy Giles’ storytelling reminds me that each person lost had a family who’s been left to mourn them. I only hope that I’ve somehow managed to find the right combination of words to convince anyone reading this review to pick up a copy of this book, because Amy’s stories are worth it. I hope she never tires of writing these tragic, beautiful contemporaries, because I will never tire of reading them.

Content warnings for grief, depression, PTSD, anxiety, drug abuse, attempted suicide

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to HarperTeen for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

DNF @ pg120

Life is hard enough in 18th-century France, and few know that better than Camille, who's been forced to take care of her younger sister and older, alcoholic brother when their parents pass from smallpox. She uses small magics to convert scraps into coins, but they're barely making ends meet when Camille finally decides to explore a side of magic her mother always warned her away from — a type of 'la magie' that can change her very appearance, and win her a ticket into Louis XVI's palace in search of riches and safety.

As a reviewer who reads so much YA fantasy, I find that it's rare to come across a plot that is as unique and fresh as Enchantée. The setting alone is a rarity, but when you add in the aristocratic players such as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, coupled with la magie and Camille's responsibility to her family, it's easy to see that Gita Trelease has crafted a genuinely original and creative story here.

Little by little, magic was erasing her. Sometimes she felt it might kill her.

Camille is unique in her own rights, too; she's got a level head on her shoulders because she's been forced to grow up so fast, but she wears her responsibilities sensibly and with a quiet acceptance. Rather than railing against her circumstances or trying to find an escape, she's committed every ounce of her being to protecting her younger sister and keeping them safe and sheltered. She's an easy protagonist to like, and she feels authentic; despite her commitment to her sister, she still allows herself to dwell occasionally on how hard her life is or how much she wishes certain things would change.

She hated la magie ordinaire, but it was all she had.

I was also immediately impressed by the quality of writing in this story. Gita Trelease is a total natural and she paints beautiful scenery. Her storytelling is lush and imaginative, with rich details. Unfortunately, it was almost too richly detailed at times, and that's where my struggles with this book began.

"What else is there to do with a life than spend it?"

Despite all of the positives I mentioned above, the problem I had with Enchantée is that this book is simply too long. It had potential to be a quick-moving, well-paced plot full of action and intrigue and the occasional suspenseful thrill, but instead, so much time was spent focusing on the opulence around Camille that, while it paints a pretty picture, it's hard to stay very invested in the goings-on.

Though she'd tried so hard to hold it all, in the end it ran away like water through her fingers. Nothing stayed.

While Enchantée wasn't a perfect score for me, I honestly believe it's a 'me, not you' situation, because this book has massive potential to be so many people's favorite release of the year, and I mean that with every fiber of my being. I actually fully intend to reread this at a later date (when I'm not struggling with the final vestiges of a reading slump), because I think, had I been able to move past the slow pacing, this would've been an easy winning title for me. I highly recommend anyone who enjoys historical fantasy to check this story out, because I believe it's going to be a massively successful release, and I can't wait to watch Gita Trelease blow us all away.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Flatiron Books for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!