howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

Volume 2 dipped a little bit for me, but Volume 3 was so funny and cute! I'd say I enjoyed this volume just about as much as the first one (i.e., a whole freakin' lot), and I really loved how much more we got to see of Immortal Dragon's wife, who is a raging badass. Honestly, her ridiculous levels of angry feistiness combined with her obsession with cutesy, childish things? Relatable.

This was alright! I'm not a huge superhero fan, but I do usually enjoy the graphic novels more like this, that aren't part of any existing comic canons and just tell origin stories or whatever. Unfortunately, I just thought this was a bit boring? But I did give it a 3.5 and decided to round up to 4 because, in all fairness, I'm not the target audience for this book and I think a lot of kids would LOVE it!

Let me start by saying that this collection is absolutely incredible, important, and needed, and I hope to see it receive the attention it deserves because so many readers of all ages are going to see themselves in these essays when they may never feel like they've seen themselves reflected in any other book they've read. The collection tackles so many body-related topics, ranging from eating disorders to cancer to invisible disabilities to being overweight to body hair, and a ton more. I was absolutely amazed at the range and variety these authors brought to the table.

With anthology reviews, I usually love to review each and every story in this collection individually, but as it's 37 separate authors in the table of contents, we'd be here all day and I'd probably run out of characters if I tried that with this collection. Instead, I'm going to offer a quick list running down all of the different experiences represented within these entries:

- scoliosis
- dwarfism
- amputation
- cancer
- body/facial hair growth
- braces
- PCOS
- scarring
- being plus-sized/fat
- binge eating disorder
- being sexually active while disabled
- abnormal/heavy periods
- endometriosis
- invisible illnesses/disabilities
- EDS
- chronic pain
- wearing/not wearing makeup as a femme individual
- hormone imbalances
- Crohn's
- neuromuscular disabilities
- Deafness
- optic nerve atrophy & blindness
- being trans
- general body positivity
- general body-shaming

As you can see, there are just so many experiences depicted within these pages, and many of them are things that we never or rarely see depicted in most other books. As a woman who fits several of the experiences shown here, I was overwhelmed by how incredible it felt just to be so understood and seen by this collection. Whether you, too, have a body you don't often see in the pages of popular titles or you're simply someone looking to better understand another human's experience, I can't recommend Body Talk highly enough!

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

This was an absolutely fantastic first volume, and I can't wait to continue this series. It's a great mix of horror, dystopia, and humor, with a really fun art style — and, most of all, an extremely intriguing storyline that I can't say I've read anything quite like in the past. The whole idea of this literal farm of body parts is creepy enough on its own, but you've got to know going into it that nothing is going to go the way it should, right...? Plus, the characters are just so much damn fun.

I love the little Gudetama character, so I was hoping this would be really adorable and funny, but instead I was just bored. :(

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

*reminds self that 3.5 stars is still a good rating and I shouldn't feel bad*

I wanted to adore this as much as most of my friends adore this and/or the original full novel version of the story, but I really thought it was just alright. While I adored the conversation on queerness and on being QBIPOC, and how different that experience is from a white queer person's experience, I found the plot rather meandering and boring. The art is really pretty, though, and I think this graphic novel will be PERFECT for so many readers! It might not have been the ideal fit for me, but I still enjoyed it enough and thought it was an important enough story (including the points made for us white queer folks who frequently don't get it right when allying with our QBIPOC loved ones) to recommend!

✨ Content warnings for: homophobia, racism, gratuitous usage of a homophobic slur

Spoiler

('d*ke' — and before anyone comments on this, yes, queer women & trans folks are more than welcome to reclaim it for themselves, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still viewed by many as a slur that is EXTREMELY triggering for many queer people!)

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

DNF @ 40%

Standard DNF rating/review disclaimer: I only mark DNFed titles as "read" and/or give them star ratings if I read enough of the book to feel justified in doing so.

I saw this book get so many rave reviews, I really hoped to enjoy it, especially given that I typically like comedic memoirs and I tend to like medical memoirs as well. Sadly, the diary entry-esque formatting didn't work for me, especially in an audiobook format, and I didn't find many of the pieces particularly funny. While the author's fashion of delivery was entertaining, many of the stories felt like either: 1) cheap shots at a patient's intelligence level, weight, sexual activity, etc., or 2) the sort of one-liners my grandmother used to forward me lists of in long, graphics-filled emails.

On top of that, the audiobook actually seems to abruptly switch narrators near the halfway point, which obviously has no real impact on my rating, but it was a bit of a bizarre choice and I thought it was worth mentioning. Or maybe Adam Kay underwent puberty at some point. Or maybe I'm totally imagining things. All I know is that, from one chapter to the next, the narrator's voice changed drastically and it was weird.

Thank you so much to the publisher and LibroFM ALC Program for providing me with this finished audio copy in exchange for an honest review!

Spoiler-free review!

Since this is an anthology, I'll be splitting the review up by story first, and then give my overall thoughts at the end!

☠️ THE BIRDS OF AZALEA STREET - Nova Ren Suma ★★★☆☆
A group of teen girls observe mysterious incidents going on at their creepy neighbor's house, and decide to investigate.
The prose was very lovely and gave way to some haunting imagery, but overall the story was pretty boring and unmemorable.

☠️ IN THE FOREST DARK AND DEEP - Carrie Ryan ★★★★★
An incredibly twisted Alice in Wonderland retelling about a girl whose mysterious "white rabbit" watches from the woods and commits horrible acts of violence.
Gruesome, creepy, and easily my favorite story of the collection.

☠️ EMMELINE - Cat Winters ★★★☆☆
A young girl hides away in the wreckage of her war-torn home and awaits unsuspecting soldier boys.
Like Nova's story, it's a tale with beautiful writing but lackluster events.

☠️ VERSE CHORUS VERSE - Leigh Bardugo ★★★☆☆
When a pop star comes back from treatment after a DUI and hitting a child, her mother notices that something is very different - and very wrong.
This was one of my most anticipated reads in the collection, because I tend to enjoy Leigh's writing, and as usual, it was beautiful and descriptive, but I found myself tremendously bored and skimmed several bits of this one. I did love the ending's creep factor, though.

☠️ HIDE-AND-SEEK - Megan Shepherd ★★★★☆
Some legends claim that, when death comes for you, you may challenge him to a game... and if you win, you keep your life.
I really loved the idea behind this story, and thought it was really fun - probably one of the most interesting plots of the collection, for me.

☠️ THE DARK, SCARY PARTS AND ALL - Danielle Paige ★☆☆☆☆
Everyone calls Marnie a "monster", but when the popular boy in school falls for her, the students find out Marnie isn't the one they should be afraid of.
I found this story to be fairly subpar and was rolling my eyes by the ending of it. It was too trope-y.

☠️ THE FLICKER, THE FINGERS, THE BEAT, THE SIGH - April Genevieve Tucholke ★☆☆☆☆
When a group of teens hit their classmate on the road and leave her for dead, they quickly learn to regret their indecency.
I'm always interested to reach the editor's contribution in any given anthology, but in this case, it was my next-to-least favorite contribution. It's essentially Carrie from the bullies' POV, which just wasn't a perspective I was interested in ever hearing.

☠️ FAT GIRL WITH A KNIFE - Jonathan Maberry ★★★★☆
It sucks to be the victim of bullying, but there's a certain satisfaction that comes with turning the tables on your assailants when the world ends.
I cringed when I read the title of this story, but gave it a chance because my mom loved Maberry's Rot and Ruin series. I actually was pleasantly surprised and found this to be one of the more fun stories in the collection.

☠️ SLEEPLESS - Jay Kristoff ★★★★★
You have to be careful with online relationships, because you never know who's really on the other side of the screen.
This was another of my faves; Kristoff's writing is always fun (though his idea of teen text-speak can be a little excessive at times). I loved the twists in this one.

☠️ M - Stefan Bachmann ★★★★☆
M may be blind, but when she walks into a murder scene, she learns she has other senses that may lead her to the killer - if she can get to him before he kills again.
I really enjoyed the idea behind this one, and loved it up until the ending, which fell short for me, hence my giving it 4 stars instead of 5. The writing was beautiful and very descriptive of how horrifying it would be, to be a blind woman stuck in a house with a murderer.

☠️ THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE - Marie Lu ★★★★☆
The closet was locked from the inside - so how did the girl get in, and why won't she stop following him?
I personally have a fear of spooky closets that I never outgrew, so the idea behind this one creeped me out a little. Unfortunately, the middle felt a bit slow and less than thrilling, but I loved the ending (and the twist).

☠️ A GIRL WHO DREAMED OF SNOW - McCormick Templeman ★☆☆☆☆
The shaman's daughter hunts a cure. The brothers hunt the shaman's daughter. Unknown to both, a more foreboding presence hunts them all...
If I were rating this as a story in a fantasy collection, I might have given it 3 stars, but this didn't fit Slasher Girls AT ALL. I kept waiting for the "horror" aspect to kick in, but it was really just a weird fantasy story thrown in.

☠️ STITCHES - A.G. Howard ★★★★★
The good book says, "if your eye causes you to sin, cast it out," and this abusive father is about to learn it the hard way.
I adored this story. It's gruesome and gory and downright gross, and I enjoyed every moment of it. The ending is poignant and heavy, but still somehow optimistic.

☠️ ON THE I-5 - Kendare Blake ★★★★★
The I-5 truck route is no safe place for a pretty young girl, but what about a girl who feels a supernatural pull to these monsters - and their victims?
I loved the idea that this young girl could sniff out pedophiles and their victims, and take revenge for the poor girls left in dumpsters and forests. There were some tough parts to read, and the ending was predictable, but I thoroughly enjoyed this ending to the collection.

☠️ COLLECTION ★★★★☆
Averaged out, my rating for the collection altogether came to 3.4/5 stars, which I feel comfortable rounding up to a solid 4. While there were some definite misses, if you're into YA horror, I still think this is an anthology worth picking up.

As always, this was incredibly sweet and lovely and soft. I love the tea dragons so much and this cast of characters is delightful and wonderfully diverse. I have to admit that this was my least favorite in the series by a small margin, maybe because I felt like it held so little world-building and development — and the fact that it seemed to involve much less dialogue than the previous installments. That said, it's still a really precious read and a satisfying conclusion to an incredibly lovable series.

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