Full review on my blog from February 22nd 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/02/22/fable/

Rating: 3.5 stars

Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

Content Warnings: blood, violence, grief, death (parental), child abandonment, murder, mutilation.

For piratey found family vibes this book is an impeccable pick. I adored the dynamics onboard the ship and the treasure hunt style storyline was so much fun. I really enjoyed the way that it could be so character focused, with the crew learning to work together. I'm a sucker for protagonists joining established groups and having to learn where they fit, so that worked so well for me. Unfortunately, I wasn't sold on the romance. It was obvious from the very start, which meant it was a little boring to read the will-they, won't-they and ultimately the barriers stopping them from being together didn't really make sense. The idea that being together would put a target on their backs made perfect sense to me, but we're being sold this found family dynamic, so surely that's true of all the crew. And besides that, there were close relationships and couples aboard the ship anyway, so I didn't really understand why we were being told they couldn't be together. What did work really, really well for me was the focus on complicated family relationships. The relationship between Fable and Saint was fraught and hard and I absolutely loved it. It guided Fable's motivations so well and made her feel so authentic and real the whole way through. She's a fantastic protagonist with flexible morals and clear goals (my favourite kind) and I do want to read more about her story.

I do wish the gem sage thing had had more of a focus. I assume that it'll be a big thing in Namesake (the sequel) but for now it was a little strange. It was mentioned so casually the first time that for a moment I assumed I was supposed to already know about it, and then it flickered between being mentioned frequently and disappearing. I still don't totally understand it or its role in the plot, I would have liked it to have more of a presence so it didn't feel so much like it was just leading to the sequel.

The ending of this book was fantastic though and I found myself absolutely absorbed in the final few chapters. Overall the book was super atmospheric and the world was really interesting. I will absolutely be picking up Namesake at some point to find out what happens next, so if you're looking for an easy to read book with pirate vibes and found family, this series is a good pick.

Full review on my blog from 25th March 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/03/25/the-last-girl/

Thanks to Electric Monkey Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

Content Warnings: death, murder, pranking/hazing, breaking and entering, intentionally scaring people, anxiety, PTSD

I was expecting to love this book. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. I buddy read this with some friends and I honestly think if I wasn’t buddying then I would have read the entire book in a single sitting. Maybe not at night though, when I read some of my buddy chapters late one evening I had to sit and watch television for a half hour so I could sleep afterwards. This book might not have been that scary, but it really pushed all of my personal fear buttons.

This book hit a really good balance of fun and chilling throughout. The atmosphere worked really well. I liked the fact that all the way through the reader knew some of what was going on, but not everything. It made for a really engaging read as I tried to work out what was the fear tests going right and what was them going horribly wrong. The start of this book in particular was fantastically strong and had me page turning fast to find out what was happening. Hitting each of my buddy read stopping points was deliciously frustrating. When it came to the actual reading experience, the ending was brilliant. I was holding my breath at points as everything unfolded. I will admit that the longer I sat with the ending, the more it felt a little weaker than the rest of the story. It’s not bad by any means, but it did feel quite abrupt and I think it needed just a little more time to develop into a satisfying conclusion.

The characters were all terribly flawed and therefore so, so much fun. They were bad people, but it was hard to care when they were so interesting. They felt very real too, well fleshed out and developed. I didn’t know who to trust at any point which made for a great reading experience. I don’t think there’s a single character in this book I didn’t have a conspiracy theory about at some point or another. I also wanna mention how much I loved the anxiety/ptsd rep in this book. Certainly the anxiety sections felt fantastically represented and were done really well. I will absolutely be looking out for more work by Goldy Moldavsky, especially in the YA thriller genre.

Full review on my blog May 17th 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/05/17/one-last-stop/

Thanks to St. Martin's Griffin for the ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

Okay. We all know that I’m a romance skeptic, and extremely fussy about romance books. So let me get this out of the way right off the bat. This was so, so, so good that it made me want to read more romance. That bar is unbelievably high. Unsurprisingly, it also made me want to reread Red, White and Royal Blue. Casey McQuiston is such a good character writer. I honestly don’t know how they do it. I fell in love with Jane and August within the first few pages, and only loved them more with every passing moment.

August is a gorgeous protagonist and I am screaming from the rafters at getting to read about a fat sapphic girl living her best life and falling in love. Jane is mysterious and lovable and it’s easy to see how August fell for her instantly (I think we all get it, August, we do). I loved their dynamic and the awkward uncertainty of falling in love, compounded by the time trap. It wasn’t just August and Jane that made this book so flawless. The whole character cast was perfect. August’s roommates were perfection wrapped in… weird parcels. Wes in particular might be one of my favourite characters in 2021. He’s relatable and I love him. He’s also a bit of a disaster. I got such huge found family vibes off this book and that’s one of my favourite things in the world. I think a lot of queer people will see themselves in this book, it’s full of so much love and heart for queer friendship groups.

The atmosphere throughout this book is just wonderful. It felt like I was reading a love letter to New York, and while I’ve never been there, a lot of it resonated with me. As someone who moved away from home, found my own town and fell completely in love with my new home, I loved reading about August finding her feet in the city. Predictably a lot of this book takes place on the subway and it absolutely felt like a character in its own right. I’ll be the first to admit that initially I was skeptical of the time plot. I have been known to be excessively critical of any plots that tangle with time travel, time jumps or any kind of time chaos (it just….. ruins timelines! don’t mess with time!) but I think that it’s done really well in One Last Stop. I won’t go too much into it because I don’t want to spoil any of the reveals but it plays out in a way that stopped it feeling ridiculous. I really liked it, and the way that August’s investigative skills came into play was really fun.

I already know that this book is going to be the perfect comfort read and I’ll come back to it time and time again when I need a soothing, happy, lovey dovey read. And that’s 90% because of the characters and 10% because time heist at a drag party.

I love this series so so so much!

Full review available on my blog: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/03/01/the-galaxy-and-the-ground-within/

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

This wasn't my favourite of the Wayfarers series (that's Record of a Spaceborn Few, closely chased by To Be Taught, If Fortunate) but by the end of The Galaxy, and the Ground Within I was still predictably weepy. Once again, we have a standalone novel, though I think this one more than any of the others would benefit from having read at least the first book in the series - if only so you know who Ashby is when he comes up in one of the POVs. Still, the way that the worldbuilding is integrated feels comprehensive enough to be clear to a new reader without bogging down the story for anyone who has read the whole series. I listened to the audiobook of this, as I did with the rest, and I highly recommend the audio as a way to consume these stories. Patricia Rodriguez does a fantastic job with the narration, and each of the characters is as distinct in voice as they are in personality.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't completely sold on this one to start with. It started slow, and took me a while to get into properly. The characters are complete strangers, stranded together at a rest stop due to an accident and are forced into close quarters while they wait for it to be resolved. By the end I absolutely adored it, because I'd fallen in love with each and every one of them. Once again we have the light hearted interaction of different species and the mish-mash of cultures that makes Becky Chambers's books so endearing. They're comfort reads to the core, and I was teary eyed by the epilogues. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within felt like the most intimate of the series, just watching a handful of characters interact naturally over the course of a few days, and it worked really well.

I absolutely love the alien species throughout all of the Wayfarers books. None of them fall into the sci-fi trap of being human-lite, nor does the series hold humans up as some kind of bastion of power and goodness. They're all hugely different in biology, culture, personality and experience and it makes for a fascinating read as they interact from their totally different world-views. It also lets them delve into things that might not be natural for a group of the same species to discuss, and it's those conversations that are the heart of this book. One in particular, and I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, hit home with me and I wish everyone would read it because these 'alien' attitudes are incredibly applicable to even our boring human lives. I actually really liked that The Galaxy, and the Ground Within didn't have any human characters as part of the main cast. Humans were mentioned in passing, and that's all. It meant I could really bury myself in the Galactic Commons before having to say goodbye to the series.

This is a quiet novel in a quiet series, focusing on character driven fiction in a queer-normative, alien world. It's not action packed and busy, but instead you get to slowly fall in love with Chambers's writing and characters both. I know I'll come back to these audiobooks over and over again to rediscover these characters and worlds. If you like sci-fi and slice-of-life books, you'll find a perfect mesh of both in The Galaxy, and the Ground Within.

Full review available on my blog March 4th 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/03/04/all-the-murmuring-bones/

Thanks to W.F. Howes for the Audiobook Review Copy of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

Content Warnings: murder (adult and child), forced marriage, incest, abuse, child sacrifice.

So I once again did that thing I do where I instantly request something without reading the summary, solely because Andee recommended it to me. And once again, it worked out so, so well. I absolutely adored this book. I received an audiobook review copy and I listened to it in one sitting, unable to put it down for a second. It’s not an easy read by any means, but if you enjoy dark historical fantasy, I highly recommend it. Miren O’Malley has always known that mer are real. The O’Malley family sacrifice their children to them in return for safety and prosperity, but since the death of Miren’s mother, that deal has gone unkept and so the family’s fortunes are declining. Fortunately, Miren’s grandmother has a way to fix that. Unfortunately, that way involves marrying Miren off to Aidan Fitzpatrick, her distant cousin and all-around arsehole. Fortunately, Miren’s grandmother dies before the marriage can happen. And everything that happens after that? Unfortunate to the very end.

All the Murmuring Bones is a gothic fairytale, and the atmosphere throughout is absolutely impeccable. If you like books that lean hard into atmosphere and vibes to create a sense of horror, you’ll enjoy this one. The world is full of magic, whether that’s small magic like the little castings that women can do or big magic like the existence of merfolk, ghosts and kelpies. This magic is threaded throughout and I really enjoyed the way that it was knotted into an otherwise familiar historical setting. I also absolutely loved Miren’s repeated insistence that she wasn’t a witch before she cast some little casting or spell, all based on the fact that misogynistic men would see women’s magic as evil witchcraft and burn them for it – so instead women kept things secret and labelled them traditions instead of magic. It felt really authentic and despite the fact that this is a fantasy world, it did feel like A.G. Slatter had done some loving research into the time period.

Miren was the focus of the story, and very much the highlight of it. She might technically count as this fairytale’s damsel in distress, but she’s not much interested in being rescued. I will forever be weak for women who save themselves and Miren is dedicated to doing exactly that. Despite the actions she’s ready and willing to take to save herself from an unwanted marriage and the machinations of some truly awful men, Miren always feels good at her core. It makes her easy to love and trust as a protagonist, because I always felt like she was doing her best. I was rooting for her, I wanted her to be safe and happy because that’s what she deserved, and there were several points where I would have been very willing to kill certain men to protect her.

I can’t wait to get a paperback copy of this one on release, as I know I’ll come back to this story again when it’s dark and cold outside and I need some gothic magic to curl up with.

3.5