howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

DNF @ pg129

I might try this again someday, but honestly, I'm really sad to say that despite how ridiculously high my hopes were for this fantasy release, it isn't working for me. I'm not engaged, I can't connect to any of the characters or the writing, I'm not finding myself genuinely interested in anything that's going on, and the narrative voice itself isn't meshing well with me for a lot of reasons.

I think this will absolutely be a big hit with the right reader, but sadly, that clearly isn't me.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this free review copy in exchange for an honest review!

All Ryann wants is to travel through space, but that’s not happening for a girl living in a trailer park, taking care of her brother and his baby—so she spends her time befriending the “misfits” at her school and trying to stay out of trouble. When Alexandria shows up, she wants nothing to do with Ryann and her friends, but Ryann’s never been one to back down from a challenge, especially when that challenge is a girl known far and wide for being the only daughter of a famous astronaut who went to space and never came back.

If you’ve seen my review of The Wicker King by this same author, you already know how much I adore her as both a writer and a human being, so when I was given the opportunity to read and review The Weight of the Stars, I could barely stand myself. She told me this book was a WLW love letter to her queer-lady fans, and I remember thinking, ‘Would it be humanly possible for me to do anything other than love this?’

“I know the weight of this and I know the price.”

Thankfully, if you hadn’t already guessed, that answer was a big resounding NOPE, because here we are, and I am positively smitten by yet another incredible, poetic, melancholy, queer-as-hell K. Ancrum story. The atmosphere is incredible, the narrative voice stunned me over and over, and the characters are, just as I expected, nothing short of delightful.

Sometimes the only way to pry your arms away from tightly holding yourself together is when you’re given a reason to hold up your fists. Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself.

First and foremost, there’s Ryann Bird, the main character, who I realized within basically half a chapter that I wanted to protect at all costs because how could I not?! She’s this incredible butch girl (which, WOW, can we please see more butch girls in YA?!), she’s tall and strong and powerful, and she seems super rough around the edges but she’s a total puddle of soft, warm goo inside. I could honestly write this entire review and never mention anything besides how much I love Ryann Bird. Also, like, she’s unapologetically kind of violent but only when the situation really deserves it, and I will always live in total support of viciously protective #squadmoms.

So there they were: sitting in the ruins of the best that they could build. And it would always have to be enough.

Of course, there’s also her little found family: James, the younger brother who stopped speaking after a trauma, who has a sweet baby he cherishes and takes such good care of; Ahmed, her best friend, a soft and goofy Sikh teen (whose polyam family made me SCREAM?! more on this in a moment); Shannon, the popular girl who shouldn’t “belong” in their group but somehow perfectly does; Blake, the self-tattooed quiet one; Tomas, the gangly mohawked queer boy who is so cute and reactive and lovely. And, finally, there’s Alexandria, who is so prickly at the beginning that I couldn’t decide if I wanted to slap her or stare at her lovingly (*insert “you’re doing great sweetie” gif here*), because honestly, she has every right to be prickly.

“It’s almost like they can’t breathe without each other. I don’t even know what would happen if one of them died. The magnitude of it is terrifying.”

Finally, that thing I said I’d come back to? Well, you don’t have to read The Wicker King before this one, but you SHOULD, because a certain very precious and strange and sweet little emo trio shows back up, except a couple of decades have passed and they’re all grown up and married and parenting together and wow, this is the polyam rep my heart has been dying to see. It felt so good to see them all again and I literally screamed into a pillow when I realized we were going to spend time with them on page and just… *wistful sigh* I don’t even know what else to say besides gushing incoherently.

“Who are you supposed to be? Some kind of… Native American, Revolutionary-era, pirate… dominatrix?”

Oh, and honestly, the diverse rep in this book? Just wow, K is a queen and I will cherish her forever. Almost everyone in this group is either a person of color or queer or BOTH and it gave me so much life. I love that, while so many other authors are out here still just throwing in a Token Gay™, K’s like, “Nah, let’s just have a Token Cishet™ instead.” What a powerhouse.

“I just want to be good to her. While I can.”

The closest thing to a “complaint” I had is that there’s a big plot point which I won’t spoil, but it had me glaring at a couple of characters and internally screaming, ‘Why would you do this to me?! To yourselves?! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!’ But, then I remembered that this was a K. Ancrum book, and I knew I was signing up for some variation of heartbreak when I first opened it, and really, it was all good and beautiful enough to be worth the agony, so like I said: does it even count as a complaint? Nope.

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

I've really enjoyed the short horror work I've read from Chad Lutzke in the past. His clear trademark of fear and tragedy makes a lovely combination that I was immediately fond of, and I was hoping for more of the same in The Same Deep Water As You. While he does deliver that on a level, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, and I'm incredibly sad to report that it never quite "clicked" with me.

I definitely think this is one of those times where it's the reader, not the book, because this novella is undoubtedly going to resonate with so many members of its audience—unfortunately, I'm just not included in that number. That said, while the plot never drew me in the way I wanted it to, the writing was still lovely and haunting and easily reminded me of why I'm looking forward to my next Chad Lutzke read.

Thank you so much to Chad Lutzke for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

"Once upon a time, there was a child whom the goblins came to steal, and once upon a time, there was a child whom the goblins left behind..."

I don't reach for middle grade fantasy terribly often because I tend to be picky, but when I do, I'm looking for specific things: a whimsical world I can escape in, a sense of humor that can make me smile (or better yet, laugh out loud), and characters I can genuinely love and care for. I cannot even begin to tell you how flawlessly William Ritter's Changeling checks every last one of those boxes for me!

"We're in the Wild Wood," he whispered. "Uncharted territory."
"It's not uncharted. We're twenty feet from where we hang out every day, and I am literally holding a chart."
"Don't ruin this."

These characters are so precious and laugh-out-loud funny, but their quest is one wrought with endless suspense because you can't help but love them and want them to succeed. It's such a fascinating and pulling story from its barest bones, anyways, because from the very start, you know you're rooting for them despite the fact that their intended quest doesn't seem like it could possibly end in anything short of tears.

He could have been made of fire and she would not have let him go.

After all, this journey isn't just about changelings and goblin-folk and magic; more than anything, Changeling is about family — blood-bound, or not — and the lengths we will go to when we want to keep our loved ones safe. The bond between Cole and Tinn is just as strong and sweet as any bond between human, blood-linked siblings, and even more so, Annie Burton's motherly love for them both and the way she refuses to choose one over the other — it's downright precious. Talk about the unsung hero of a story.

"Stories are important. They are born, they die, they're born again."

While the characters were my favorite part of the story, Changeling has more going for it than that: the writing is spare and lovely, crafting a three-dimensional, beautifully fleshed-out world — full of whimsical characters and creatures, good and bad! — in a very short span of time. This is undoubtedly going to be a hit with bookworms and reluctant readers alike, and I, for one, can't wait to recommend it (and to eagerly pick up the second book when it releases!).

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

Having read (most of) Cynova's Kitchen Table Tarot, I was pretty excited to have the chance to read this new release of hers, but I have to say I didn't love it quite as much. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great guide to some really cool tarot spreads, and I loved the whole idea behind focusing on your energy and all in certain levels related to the elements, but the writing itself didn't pull me in as well. I think my biggest complaint was that it felt like this book would've benefited tremendously from being a lot shorter. It felt like Cynova spent a pretty solid portion of the book bulking up the page count with repetitive anecdotes, and at times I started skimming for pages on end because it was just kind of like, Okay, I get the point, can we move on to the next thing?

That said, this is still a solidly cool and unique look at using tarot readings to improve your life, and I will absolutely be taking away some exercises and spreads to use in my own daily life—starting with the 'Earth' spreads and exercises to get my home in order for the first time in far too long!

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wells’ mansion looked like every ghost story he’d ever read. As they drew closer, Rick couldn’t shake the feeling he was about to become part of one.

I’ve read and reviewed many of Jonathan Janz’s releases and re-releases over the last several months, and have loved all of them, but none have won me over quite as much as my first read of his, The Siren and the Specter—that is, until finishing this newest novel of Jonathan’s, The Dark Game.

I know what haunts you, Wells gloated. I can summon it here to claim you.

Right off the bat, this synopsis ticked so many boxes for me. I love books about writers, I love plots involving competitions, and I love “retreat” settings (camps, secluded mansions, etc.). Most of all, I love when a horror story features multiple characters plagued by their own personal demons—but it’s not an easy trick to pull off, because telling these layered stories-within-a-story requires a nuanced and talented creator. Luckily, Jonathan Janz is precisely that.

“This place… is a wonderland of hideous beauty. Of dreadful passion.”

As is typically the case with one of Jonathan’s stories, there’s a wide and varied cast of characters, but I didn’t find myself losing track of who’s who or disliking the number of perspectives; if anything, it was so intriguing to watch the story-telling style change as the players began to exit the game. And boy, do they ever exit quickly; The Dark Game’s action picks up early and never lets up.

I learned something that night. I learned that stories have incredible power. They can teach. They can transport. But they can also bring misery. They can enslave. Some stories can kill.

Up until now, I’ve always recommended that readers who are unfamiliar with Jonathan Janz titles begin with Siren, but after finishing up this incredible whirlwind of nightmarish suspense, you can’t go wrong with The Dark Game as an introduction to his work, either. I know this is going to be a new all-time favorite that I’ll be raving about for a long time to come, and I can’t wait to see what Jonathan does next to top it.

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

Red didn’t like to think of herself as a killer, but she wasn’t about to let herself get eaten up just because she was a woman alone in the woods.

Every now and then, you find a book that is so special, so incredible, has such a massive impact on your life that when you turn that last page, you think to yourself, This is what stories are supposed to do to us. This is how it’s supposed to feel. Friends, I am so pleased to tell you that The Girl in Red was absolutely one of those books for me.

“Do you think I don’t know what kind of men this world has wrought? Every woman knows. And those men existed before everything fell apart.”

Let’s start by talking about my undying love for our main character, Red: she is so complex and real and flawed in the best possible ways. She’s snarky and angry and a bit of a know-it-all, but frankly, she’s generally right and nobody really listens to her, so I think she’s totally earned that arrogance. She’s a walking, talking amalgamation of so many reasons people have to discredit a person—she’s a woman, queer (bi or pan, I’m not sure), biracial (black/white), and disabled (she has a prosthetic leg from the knee down on one side). She’s a science-loving, conspiracy-theory-holding, horror-film-aficionado, too (and, frankly, I know many people who fit so many of the same descriptions as Red, so if your argument is that she’s “too marginalized” to feel like a real human being, I’ll ask you to go ahead and leave me out of that conversation, please and thank you).

It was always men like this, men who thought that they could take what they wanted and leave the broken scraps of people behind.

Now, beyond my undying adoration for Red and her brilliant, nurturing self and desperate commitment to survival and freedom, let’s talk about this plot. It’s a near-future apocalypse story, and it pains me a little to say how believable it felt. As someone who is typically also very distrusting of many of the groups of people responsible for the terrors in this story, yeah, I could absolutely see something like this happening and it petrifies me a little to think about. Especially when one considers the underlying theme woven into The Girl in Red’s storyline, which is that in any given apocalyptic scenario, the biggest horror will almost always be our fellow humans.

It was never the Event—illness, asteroid, nuclear war, whatever—that was the problem. It was what people did after. And people always reduced to their least human denominators when things went bad.

The stakes are so high in The Girl in Red and the threats never stop coming; if it’s not the epidemic that started the whole thing, it’s the twisted, brutalized manner Red keeps finding corpses in, or the homemade militia teams prowling for food and women to take, or the leering, stained grins on the faces of so many of the men she encounters. The commentary on rape culture is powerful here and Christina Henry always excels at interlacing a suspenseful, enrapturing storyline with themes of feminism and rebelling against the idea that anyone deserves to take advantage of another human being, ever.

“We all die at the end. What we do before the end is what counts.”

Finally, underneath the immersive setting and story, the lovable-yet-flawed protagonist, the feminist undertones, the mortifying descriptions of the epidemic, and the stunning and powerful writing style that is so uniquely Chrstina’s… there’s also a story of family, whether they’re bound to us by blood or not. Red’s entire reason for fighting boils down not only to survival, but to protecting the people she cares about, too. The familial love is powerful and endlessly heart-wrenching as it reminds us of the lengths we’ll go to and the risks we’ll take to keep our loved ones safe.

Red was going to live, and instead of triumphant victory it suddenly felt like a horse she’d have to drag with her all the rest of her days. The only consolation in being a survivor was that you’d survived.

There’s so much more I’d love to say about The Girl in Red, but let’s be honest: it’s a short story full of twists and turns, and there isn’t much else I can detail without going into spoiler territory. I think this book is probably a stand-alone title, but I desperately hope Christina Henry will at least consider a sequel, because there’s absolutely room for one and I need more time with this story. I know this is the sort of book I’m going to be raving about and re-reading for a long time to come, and I hope you will, too.

Thank you to Berkley for providing me with this review copy in exchange for my honest opinion!

I thought this would be really fun and informative, but honestly... it lost me really fast. I thought, "Oh, unicorn magic — that's a cute metaphor, right?" No. No. This book never stops talking about unicorns. Yes, they're pretty and fun and interesting, but... can we talk about something actually pertaining to what I got this book for?

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I love books on astrology, but I've never found one I loved this much. Robinett knows her stuff, and knows how to put it across in a relatable and easy-to-understand manner. While this might be a bit of an information overload if you tried to read it cover-to-cover in a day, it would make an absolutely amazing reference book to keep on your shelves (or e-reader, whichever).

When reading books about astrology, one fun thing I like to do is to look up myself and each of my immediate family members and see how much the bits on our signs match up. For example, my spouse is a Gemini who doesn't fit Gemini rules at all, so I was entertained to see that, yet again, the Gemini blurbs didn't fit them. On the other hand, my running joke is that "I'm the Libra-est Libra you'll ever meet," and I was sitting here reading this book and literally fussing to my spouse across the room, saying, "I feel so called out right now!" haha.

Seriously though, this book is incredibly accurate and informative, but even more than that, it's a really fun read that offers a ton of insight into why we are the way that we are. While Robinett explains things in a way that I think will make perfect sense to the greenest newcomer to astrology studies, she does it in a way that won't bore someone who already knows a lot about how the signs work.

I recommend this to absolutely anyone and everyone who has any interest at all in astrology, and I've already pre-ordered a physical copy to have on my own shelf!

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

i suppose someday
i will find the courage
to not fear
my own humanness.

what i was born from.
what i will inevitably make.
what will hopefully
turn out beautiful.

Almost Home is a tough poetry collection to rate. First of all, I personally am a big fan of this poetry style: the capitalization-free, minimal-punctuation storytelling is easy for me to relate to, and the stream-of-consciousness narrative works really well with my brain in particular.

i have always been soft
when i should've been hard
and hard when i should've been soft.

I say all of this to tell you: I'm not sure why I didn't love this collection. Honestly, it's the sort of thing I "should" have really adored, and I did LOVE many poems in the collection (with these that I've quoted being my favorites). It's just that so many of the poems in between fell flat for me due to repetition, or more often than not, simply being too long. One of the reasons this style works so well is because the poems are typically done in short bursts, but many of these are 3 solid pages long, and I feel like the "punch" of the story she's telling begins to feel watered down once you've spent that many paragraphs re-wording the same emotion.

i am happy and lucky
to be here.
it makes my heart heavy
to know that i must
remind myself of that
so often.

That said, if you like this style, too, it's definitely worth giving a shot, because there are some real gems in the collection. The last section of the book is about self-love and appreciating the world around us, and after 150+ pages of discussing trauma, mental illnesses, and (I mean this kindly, not to throw shade) self-pity parties, it was a huge breath of fresh air to hit the poems like this last one I've quoted. Those alone were enough to make me feel like, despite this not firing on all cylinders for me, Almost Home is still the sort of collection I could happily recommend to other readers.

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