howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

#1 Nevernight ★★★★★
#2 Godsgrave ★★★★★
#3 Darkdawn ???

If Vengeance has a mother, her name is Patience.

I don't even know how to start this review. I think I could honestly just write several paragraphs of assorted expletives and shocked/devastated/adoring/amused/enraged/amazed emojis, and it would get the same point across, really. This book is everything I hoped it would be and so much more, and I don't know how I'll ever recover from the traumatizing glory that is this series.

The storm begs no forgiveness of the drowned.

Mia Corvere. My sweet, angry, wounded little Crow. I love her so much, on so many different levels and for endless reasons, and she put me through hell in this installment, but I enjoyed every moment of it. Every move she makes is so calculated and brilliant, and I could honestly spend thousands of pages just watching the wheels in her head turn. My heart broke a million times over for her during these chapters, and it's brutal to know that this book was probably nothing compared to what the finale will bring.

“You can keep the glory. I'm just here for the blood.”

And the story and pacing in this one! Many trilogies assuredly suffer from the infamous "Middle Book Syndrome", but this is not one of them. If I thought I was on the edge of my seat during Nevernight, that was nothing. Once Godsgrave gets rolling, it brings with it such a whirlwind of action and bloodshed and ruin, you positively can't look away. Despite a terrible reading slump delaying me during the first 20% or so of this book, I think I flew through the last 80% in a few days because it was all I could think about and I found myself reaching for more in every possible free moment I had.

“Our scars are just gifts from our enemies... Reminding us they weren't good enough to kill us.”

And finally, the romance in this one. If you don't know anything about it, I won't be the one to spoil you, but what a roller coaster. I was spoiled for this particular pairing ages ago, and went into this book wondering how on earth I could possibly root for these characters together, but by the time it came to fruition, I was just as invested as everyone told me I'd be. And Mia's queer rep and questioning? It was everything, watching her slowly piece together why she found herself so fascinated with other women. As another bisexual woman who didn't admit it to myself out until my late teens (hello, Mia, I see you ♥), her journey and realization resonated so soundly with me, I might have even shed a few happy tears. (Thank you, Jay, for telling the story of so many queer ladies like me and Mia, and telling it so damn well.)

“That’s Fear talking. Never listen to him. Fear is a coward.”

There's so much more I want to say, but it would all just be redundant at this point, friends. Let me just say that as far as I'm concerned, this is one of the greatest series ever written, and I can't imagine ever losing the feeling of utter amazement at how beautifully crafted this story, these characters, and this world is. I want to dive right into Darkdawn, and when that's over, I want to start the whole series over — again, and again, and again.

Haunting, haunting, haunting, and good God, I don't know why this trauma belongs to me.

There's something that many lovers of horror literature have come to accept, which is the fact that a lot of horror authors aren't looking to promote any sort of deeper message or morals—they're simply putting out a spooky story and hoping it sticks, and there's nothing wrong with that. Every now and then, though, you find a horror author who can disarm and unsettle you while telling these incredibly meaningful, important stories, and those are the ones that tend to stick with me. Mike Thorn? He's one of those authors.

Darkest Hours is a deeply disturbing collection that shifts between shocking moments of outright terror and examining the worst parts of the human psyche, reminding us that we're often surrounded by the scariest monsters of all. He doesn't pull any punches, but his writing doesn't rely on only scares and chills—Mike's got such a witty and fluid style that I would happily reach for again and again.

I didn't give any story in the collection less than 3 stars, but most of them were far better than that, with these as my favorites:

→ Hair: This is one of the most disgusting and AMAZING short stories I've ever read. What a way to kick off a collection!
→ Long Man: The descriptions in some of these scenes were downright nauseating (in the best way), and that ending? Perfect.
→ Sabbatical: This story was the perfect example of the way Mike has this way of setting the stage and then spinning the whole thing on its head and taking you completely off-guard.
→ Lucio Schluter: I had a slight, sinking suspicion about the ending on this one, and it was exactly as gruesome and incredible as I thought it would be. Talk about terrifying.

Altogether, I'm so glad I got the chance to read Darkest Hours and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for future releases from Mike Thorn. I highly recommend grabbing a copy of this one as soon as you can!

Thank you so much to Mike Thorn for sending me a review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts!

Volume 1 ★★★★★
Volume 2 ★★★★★

I feel like I should've read this in a day like I did with Vol 1, but I kind of misplaced it for a few weeks...

Anyways, this was absolutely precious, just like the rest of this series. In this issue, we get to meet a few new faces - Momiji, Hatsuharu, and Ayame, most notably - and learn some fantastic back story on a few Sohma members (specifically the heartbreaking tale of Momiji's mother, and the horrible abuse that Yuki has undergone at the hands of Akito). We start to see some interesting feelings coming from both Yuki and Kyo, as well as commemorating a tearful first anniversary of Tohru's loss of her mother.

I love this series so damn much.

Volume 1 ★★★★★
Volume 2 ★★★★★

I loved Fruits Basket as a kid, in both its anime and manga forms, but I never got the chance to finish the series back then, and I slowly fell out of touch with manga and anime altogether as the years passed. As an adult, I've been wanting to get back into it, so when I saw the entire series of collector's editions at my local library, I had to grab them all, and I'm so happy that I did. This was so precious and just as fun as I remembered it being. The characters are so lovable (which works well, since Fruits Basket is an incredibly character-driven series!). The artwork is cute and perfectly typical of late 90s/early 00s manga (I mean this as a good thing!), so every page was like a throwback to my childhood. <3

#1 The Kiss Quotient ★★★★★
#2 The Bride Test ★★★★☆

'Nothing gets to you. It's like your heart is made of stone.'

I always find it a little bit stressful to read the sequel of a book I loved, because there's so much pressure: what if the sequel isn't as good at the first book? Or what if it blows the first book out of the water and makes me rethink my entire rating system?! Because of that, it's pretty common for me to stall a bit when picking up a sequel, which is what happened with The Bride Test. I read the first 2 chapters, put it down for 2 weeks, and then read the rest of the book in one sitting. Go figure.

But something inside of him loosened, and he didn't mind so much the way she said his name now.

Unfortunately, I did not love The Bride Test as much as I loved The Kiss Quotient, but it's still absolutely worth reading! Much like in TKQ, we've got a somewhat slow-burning romance between two people whose sexual chemistry is off the charts, but who can't communicate well enough to get past themselves and make it work. It's a blessing and a curse, because I love a good slow-burn romance, but sometimes these characters made me want to scream.

She would do anything for this little one. Except give her up.

Khai's brilliant and amusing, but his stubbornness became a little cruel sometimes. Esme, I loved endlessly—her wit, her determination, her intelligence, and the way she owned her sexuality—with my only complaint being that I genuinely couldn't imagine living with someone for weeks and never once letting them know I have a child. As a mom, there were details to that whole scenario that were so frustrating, but they were a little easier to overlook only because the logical side of me knew she was doing it for Jade's own well-being in the long run.

What a difference an ocean made.

Sigh. I feel like this review's a bit of a mess; while I genuinely did enjoy The Bride Test so much, putting my thoughts down on paper has me seriously considering all of the things I was disappointed by. I will give a caveat that the last 1/3 or so of this book is practically flawless and made me cry happy tears, but the more of this review I'm writing, the less I can justify anything above a 4-star rating. I'm very excited for the third book and I can't wait to spend more time with Quan, and I loved a lot of things about this book, but I'm a little bit worried nothing will be able to trump TKQ for me.

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

Volume 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Volume 2 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Oh, man, I loved this SO MUCH. My heart hurt for poor little James and everyone else in this town, but it's hard to focus for long on the tragedy of these missing and murdered children when this incredibly badass monster hunter, Erica Slaughter, arrives. I loved everything about her character and I seriously need to know more of her back story ASAP. Everything from her character design to her snarky attitude to her fearlessness in the face of monsters had me totally rooting for her and I can't wait to read more!

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

As I’ve mentioned in reviews before, I’m pretty new to the adult contemporary genre. It’s one that I never thought I would get into, but reading Talia’s A Girl Like Her a few weeks ago sold me on this author, and now I want to read everything she’s ever written (or ever will write). I can’t believe how addicting this story was, or how hard I was rooting for these characters, or how much the angst of the situation broke my heart.

She was like a river, forging its path through earth and stone; so soft, so fluid and seeming gentle, but powerful enough to mold the world to her will.

I think most of us have read books where a girl pined after her untouchable, promiscuous male best friend, but I’d never read a story that reversed the roles, and I loved it. The book starts off strong with a description of how they met in college, and how after a few weeks, Jasmine took Rahul home, slept with him, and then promptly forced him to choose: sex or friendship. Shockingly (to Jas), he chose friendship, and spent the next seven years trying desperately (and failing) to fall out of love with her.

Sometimes, she didn’t want to tease and laugh and flirt with anything that moved; sometimes she wanted to lash out. He understood that. He didn’t mind that.

It’s not always easy to read their interactions, because Jasmine can be so brutal in her attempts to block off any semblance of feelings or attachment to anyone—especially Rahul, the only person besides her father who she truly loves—but you can’t help but root for her anyways, especially knowing the trauma that has led her to this point.

He thought, Kiss me. Give me something, give me a reason, give me permission, and I’ll give you everything I have.

It’s also downright agonizing to watch Rahul pine after her, because he’s such a lovable character—truly one of the best “book boyfriends” I’ve ever seen in any contemporary novel, regardless of age range. He cares so much for her and wants nothing more than to keep her safe and happy, no matter how much it costs him. This book highlighted something that I love about Talia’s writing, too, which is that she writes the most fantastically feminist male leads, with not a hint of toxic masculinity or disrespect to be found. (Heads up, though—Rahul does get pretty bossy in the bedroom, but it’s very much in a lighthearted dom/sub way, not in an overly aggressive manner at all.)

Those were all the categories she had. He’d exhausted her options. But sometimes she thought that, if he asked, she’d build a whole new one, just for him.

This is a very angst-filled story for sure, with some heavy back stories for each character, but the sweet moments are frequent and totally precious. There’s probably more sex in this story than anything I’ve ever read, but I personally feel that Talia writes her sex scenes superbly, with the passion and emotions so tangible that sometimes I found myself tearing up during the sex scenes, and if that doesn’t tell you how sold I was on this couple, what would?

In the silence and the shadows, the brush of their lips felt like something holy. Like prayers whispered into the earth, like purifying flames.

The last thing I want to gush about is how gorgeously diverse Talia’s characters are! Jasmine is a plus-sized black woman, and she’s also queer—it’s not specified if she’s bisexual or pansexual, but there are numerous references to her taste in women and her experiences with them. Rahul comes from a Muslim father and a Hindu mother, and each character’s perspectives go to great lengths to describe how much they adore the other’s respective physical traits, whether it’s Rahul’s features and skin, or Jasmine’s weight and natural hair. I just love how much Talia’s writing celebrates characters who aren’t shoved into the boxes of “white, thin, cis-gendered, and straight” that so much of adult contemporary fixates on! On a side note, there’s also a super cute lesbian side couple.

She was everything. She was a hurricane.

Finally, on a darker note, I want to express that this book deals with some very heavy topics, such as alcohol dependency, parental neglect, death of a parent, and severe anxiety, so if any of these things trigger you, please proceed with caution! That said, if you’re looking for a fantastic, diverse adult contemporary, you really can’t go wrong with Talia Hibbert, and I strongly recommend giving Wanna Bet? a try!

This was so much fun. I have to figure out how to review it without spoiling anything, because the entire story was super different from what I initially expected, but I had a blast reading this. RTC

This was so sweet, and so funny, and warmed every last fiber of my little heart. ♥ RTC

This book has been fairly hyped lately, mainly for its claims as a staunchly feminist YA fantasy. You guys already know I’m here for all the feminist reads, so I was pretty excited to pick this one up. When it comes to ARCs, I usually like to go in without knowing much about the story in advance, but a lot of my friends posted reviews for this book over the last week or so, so I had to peek—and found that I ended up agreeing with almost all of them.

“You must be as strong as this prison, as strong as the stone and ocean that hems you in. You are brick and barbed wire. You are iron.”

Like many other reviewers, I was genuinely disappointed by Grace and Fury, for a few different reasons. The first and most basic disappointment about the story was the writing voice. It wasn’t noticeably bad, it was just not impressive. There are a couple of good quotes, but if this tells you anything, I usually highlight/tab at least 10 quotes in the average book so that I can choose my favorites for my review—in this book, I only was able to find 4 that I thought were decent enough to use.

Women had ruled this country. And history had denigrated them. Erased them.

My other, larger problem with the story was the sisters themselves, Nomi and Serina. The perspectives alternate, and while they’re very different characters, 1) their “voices” feel identical, and 2) they both consistently make the worst decisions possible, and it not only harms them, but it also hurts the people around them (most of them innocent, more or less). One choice in particular is made that literally spells out impending doom for hundreds of people, yet the character who makes the decision just doubles down and refuses to show any remorse. I wanted to throw my iPad so many times out of pure frustration with these girls.

Every aspect of their world pitted women against each other while men watched.

The book does have some redeeming qualities in the sense that it is very feminist, though I’m not sure if it sets the best examples of feminism. As I mentioned before, choices are made—for the sake of the sisters’ perspectives on feminism—that actually hurt people more than they help them. I felt like they were so immature that they rushed blindly into situations without any consideration for how it would affect anyone else, because all that mattered was that they were “rebelling”.

“In all the stories, women give up everything.”

That said, the book is not a total waste of time: it’s a very fast read, and the ending put things into such a tailspin that, as reluctant as I am to sit through another 300 pages of awful choices and subpar writing, I have to know what happens next. I doubt I’ll request an ARC or purchase the sequel, but I could see myself grabbing it from the library next year just to see where things go next. All of this in mind, though, I can only truly recommend picking up Grace and Fury if you aren’t looking for anything particularly impressive and don’t mind irritating characters.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Little, Brown 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!