howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

What a cute little graphic novel! I love the idea of this world where all of these little paranormal kiddos come out to go to school and play and such at night. The dialogue is a little over the top, but in a good, realistic-depiction-of-hyperactive-children way, complete with silly expressions that I think young readers are going to find delightful. I wouldn't say this graphic novel was anything special for me, but I'm not the target audience here, and I think the actual target audience will love this.

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

Holy hell, this was AMAZING! I'm so grateful that I grabbed this from NetGalley and I'm already dying to get my hands on the next volume because I NEED to know what happens next. I'm not usually into superhero stories, but the twist on this plotline makes it such a breath of fresh air that I couldn't help loving it.

Omni not only has a beautiful art style and some very lovable characters (seriously, is anyone else shipping Cece and Mae as hard as I am?!), but the storywriting here is brilliant. Cece and Mae are a self-recognized play on Sherlock and Watson, which I love enough all on its own, but when you add in the "is Earth trying to eradicate humanity" theme and the commentary on people from disenfranchised communities taking back the power? Brilliant. Brilliant.

Seriously, I rooted for every single Ignited character we've met so far, and I feel like this is one of those rare graphic novel series I'm going to be shoving at people for a long time to come. Please, do yourself a favor and check this one out — you won't regret it!

✨ Representation: Dr. Cecelia "Cece" Cobbina, Dr. Livi Cobbina, and Antony are all Black; Mae is plus-sized; all 'Ignited' side characters are Black, Latinx. or Asian.

✨ Content warnings for: violence, police brutality, racism, depiction of internment centers & separation of migrant families

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

Excuse me, I think I have a new favorite manga series.

This is absolutely adorable and hilarious. I love how each chapter starts off with a vague scene that comes across as violent or sketchy, and then there's always a reveal that his goings-on are totally innocent and helpful. Honestly, just absolutely precious and I laughed out loud so many times reading this one volume that I already can't wait for Vol. 2!

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

I'm in a reviewing slump right now, so I'm going to keep this short: nobody is more surprised or disappointed than me that this was only a 3-star read for me. I'd heard so many rave reviews from people whose tastes usually aren't far off from mine, and I'm a tremendous sucker for the best-friends-to-lovers trope (especially when they were childhood friends!), so I think this should have worked out great for me.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the writing style 100% enjoyable, the characters struck me as a bit flat, and the conflict near the end was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. I don't normally mind petty conflicts and miscommunication that much in a romance, but I literally almost just DNFed this around the 80% mark because I was so over the way these two were treating each other!

Also, there are some strings left majorly untied, and while I'm sure that's because they'll be explored further in the next book (since Goodreads says this is a series), it was done in a way that just left me questioning my own reading comprehension. There's a line in the epilogue that threw me for such a loop, I had to go back a couple of pages and re-read to see if I had missed something (I hadn't). Honestly, I low key disliked the entire epilogue and wish it had been left out altogether.

There are a lot of things this book does right, though. I loved seeing a romance with an all-Black cast, I loved the banter and playfulness between Navaya and Xander, and I loved Xander's POV sections. He was the most enjoyable character in the book for me and I liked his little friend group and how they constantly gave him hell for everything.

While this book was a bit of a letdown for me, sadly, I can totally see why it's getting the high praise it is, and I am definitely interested in checking out more from this author in the future! If you're looking for a short, steamy, diverse friends-to-lovers romance, I definitely recommend giving this one a chance.

DNF @ 51%

The good: this story has a realistic portrayal of what life is like for many women, especially women of color, in the game development industry, even down to the ways the women themselves are almost always blamed for the harassment they receive.

The bad: I didn't enjoy the writing itself, Melody's character, the total lack of chemistry between Mel and Nolan, or Melody's parents being raging assholes for comedic effort (like when she calls them out on being rude to Liftr/Uber drivers, one of her parents says to the other one something about "that Black person driver" and literally NOTHING is said about it — like it's a joke???).

Also, please correct me if I missed something or just didn't read far enough into the story to get to this point, but... is Melody a gamer at all? Her motivation for getting into the industry felt like she was less interested in gaming and more interested in being able to say she did it. I never really understood why she wanted the job and it never felt like she had any passion whatsoever for what she was doing. I don't remember a single mention in the first half of the story to her actually liking video games. I went into this book expecting a gamer as an MC, but didn't feel like I got that at all.

All of this combined had me wanting to stop reading anyways, but then it reached a point where I realized I just wasn't even remotely enjoying the story enough to justify how miserable the harassment plot line was making me. It's all 100% valid and very true to life, so don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the way it was written — I just didn't want to read it.

As a woman who's been in the gaming community, especially online, basically my entire life, the kind of shit Melody was hearing (aside from the racist elements, which I'm very aware I can't relate to but make her experience much more terrible than any experience I've had) was stuff women who game have been hearing as long as I can remember and it wasn't something I wanted to read about in my fiction, too. It was just bringing back WAY too many traumatic memories and I finally realized it was better for my mental health if I just put the book down.

I felt like this message was one I could have enjoyed more if I wasn't a gamer myself. I also couldn't help but be bothered that (again, in the first half — please correct me if this changed in the second half) we literally only see ONE dude in the entire company who isn't a raging piece of shit, and much like our MC, there is NO mention at all of him being a gamer (he only works there because it's his uncle's company), which I feel like paints some sort of idea that the gaming community has no safe spaces at all for women and that the entire thing is a lost cause. Loving a community is holding it accountable, yes, but it also needs to allow a little room for celebrating its successes, and I didn't see that happening anywhere here.

I didn't mean for this review to be so long or frustrated. I guess I'm just so immensely disappointed in this book and I had such high hopes that I can't help but vent. I think plenty of other people will love this romance for what it is, but it wasn't for me.

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

The Housemates has been best summed up by many others as "Big Brother meets Saw", and I think that's very fitting, so I'll echo that sentiment, too. While this is an installment in a series, it can easily be read as a standalone, which is what I did — and I'm glad I just went straight for the book with the premise that interested me most instead of insisting on starting from the beginning, because while I was engaged enough to finish this in one go, I have to say that I was annoyed by more segments than I enjoyed, and I have literally zero interest in ever spending another moment with this main character. Damien is one of the most aggravating, insufferable protagonists I've met in a long time, and if he had rolled his eyes one more time (I counted, I think, six? eye-rolls by the 5% mark!), I would have screamed.

For the other things I disliked here:

1) one-dimensional side characters

2) a very predictable twist ending

3)

Spoiler

the only BIPOC character is a Black man who speaks in very shoddy dialogue for all of 2 sentences before being killed off by a racist asshole

4)

Spoiler

that same Black man is later revealed to have been a Nigerian con artist who made tons of money off of "Nigerian prince" schemes - could you possibly play into any MORE stereotypes with this character?

5)

Spoiler

in the first elimination competition between two women, instead of having normal Saw-esque competitions like the other competitors, they are shackled to cone-shaped machines that essentially rape them to death

6) because the book exists within a series following the same protagonist, everything feels extremely low-stakes because we expect Damien to survive so he can go on to the next book — which is precisely why horror books rarely function well within a series format

I'm sorry to rant so much, especially because I did some searching around online and have seen many mentions that this author is a really lovely person, and I hate to rant so vehemently about my introduction to his work, but this book positively infuriated me throughout most of the story and the payoff in the end did not feel like it was worth my time. I don't recommend The Housemates and I highly doubt I will be reading anything else from Iain Rob Wright in the future.

This cute, fun, messy graphic novel has a lot of important stuff to say and I loved the 90s RiotGrrrl aesthetic so much, but I don't know how I felt about the actual art of storytelling here. I found myself bored at times and experiencing whiplash at others due to the complete inconsistency of pacing, and the entire final chapter was rushed and felt untidy and strange. While I'm glad I picked it up, I don't foresee myself recommending it much simply because it feels like the sort of forgettable story I won't think back on very often after today.

✨ Content warnings for: girl-hate, fat-shaming, eating disorders (incl. bulimia & vomiting), smoking addiction & withdrawals, racism, slut-shaming, misogyny (all behaviors are eventually challenged in the text, though sometimes vaguely)

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

This had potential, but lacked so much in the execution. The art was lovely at times, but incredibly inconsistent. The plot was interesting, but hard to follow. The zombie apocalypse clearly had some sort of bizarre twist that made it very unique, but we're never given ANY explanation for what causes that twist or how it functions. On top of everything else, one of our main characters, Vivi, consistently makes the worst possible decisions time and time again and is not just useless, she's also an endless liability to Eva's safety. The entire book was one confusing disappointment after another.

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

#1 Every Heart a Doorway ★★★★★
#2 Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★★
#3 Beneath the Sugar Sky ★★★★★
#4 In An Absent Dream ★★★★★
#5 Come Tumbling Down ★★★★★
#6 Across the Green Grass Fields ★★★★★

Every time I think I can’t love Seanan McGuire any more than I already do, I read another of her stories, and I’m proven wrong. She is such an incredible storyteller, and she portrays the most necessary, important perspectives on the world and on how humans treat one another, and I am so here for it, always and forever.

Day after day, she had learned that “fat” was another way to say “worthless, ugly, waste of space, unwanted, disgusting.” She had started to believe them by the time she was in third grade, because what else was she supposed to do?

In each of the Wayward Children books so far, we’ve seen how Seanan has taken a specific point or two and honed in on it—in Every Heart a Doorway, it was asexuality and transmisia. In Down Among the Sticks and Bones, it was gender stereotypes and neglectful parenting. In Beneath the Sugar Sky, it is fatphobia—and as a plus size woman reading this series, the perspective of the protagonist Cora, the kindly and brave plus sized mermaid, was all I wanted yet never knew I could have in a story.

Maybe Christopher had the right of it, going someplace where people had figured out how to do without the fleshy bits, where they would be judged on their own merits, not on the things people assumed about them.

I have never read a book that tackled the issue so damn well and so unapologetically, and to the many people who consider it “over the top”, I ask that you please check your privilege and recognize that the rep had to be in-your-face because almost nobody else is saying these things, especially in the world of SFF fiction. There are so few authors who are willing to even portray fat characters in a positive light, much less to tackle the struggles we undergo in everyday society and the misconceptions that people form about us and our bodies and health statuses. Seanan paints Cora as an incredibly healthy and capable young woman who also happens to be plus size (which is a reality for more individuals than society would have you think), but she also is willing to point towards the harm that any form of abuse and bullying wreaks upon a person’s psyche, as there is a subtle mention of Cora having attempted suicide simply because she was so weary of living in a world that believed her size diminished her worth.

Everyone who wound up at Eleanor West’s School—everyone who found a door—understood what it was to spend a lifetime waiting for something that other people wouldn’t necessarily understand.

I could honestly gush for ages about how much it meant to me to see myself represented in this book, to see a portrayal that I had, until this year, literally given up on ever seeing in fiction—but I know you guys want to hear about the story itself, too. This is the first novella in the series that actually follows a “quest”, and it brings a few new characters into play that are wholly lovable and, as always with Seanan’s writing, fleshed out to be so complex and three-dimensional in such a short span of time. We also get to spend more time with a few old favorites from the first book, as well as revisiting someone I thought we might not get to see again. This is our first glance at one of the wilder worlds, and it is so fascinating and well described that I couldn’t help but picture every single scene vividly in my mind.

The rules of the school are simple. Heal. Hope. And if you can, find your way back where you belong.

I can’t honestly pick a favorite from this series so far, because they all are so incredible and fun to read, but as far as the representation goes, Beneath the Sugar Sky is the one that meant the most to me on a personal level. I literally cried (more than once), and it really put into fresh light for me, how important diverse representation in stories is—because I want every single person in the world who is a part of any marginalized community, whether it is based upon their sexuality, gender identity, race, disability, size, etc.—to be able to pick up books that act as mirrors, and for them, too, to have that moment of happy tears streaming down their face when they finally see a character and get to say, “Wow, that’s me.”

Well, this was pretty damn cute. I love Sarah Andersen's work, so I knew I needed this in my life as soon as I learned it existed, and I'm so glad I checked it out. I love the general aesthetic of these two, with Elsie being super goth and generally reminding me of Morticia Addams (my WCW forever), and Jimmy being cozy and sweet in his endless flannel apparel. I will say that I wouldn't go into this expecting a cohesive webcomic by any means, as it functions more like Sarah's Scribbles, where we're only getting brief, nonlinear glimpses into random interactions between the characters, but it works well. ♥

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