innamorare's Reviews (71)

I was hoping there was a poly relationship ❤️‍🩹

We Were Liars meets The Raven Boys? Sign me up! Boys with Sharp Teeth is a haunting dive into the dark academia genre, blending revenge, obsession, and even the supernatural. Marin James remodels herself into Jamie Vane and infiltrates the prestigious Huntsworth Academy to investigate the truth about her cousin Sam’s death. What begins as a mission of justice and revenge soon spirals into a tangle of  blurred morality, eldritch horrors, and potentially even some psychological unraveling.

Jamie often left me questioning her reliability as a narrator. (I'm all for Mara Dyer unreliable narrator vibes) Does she truly see ghosts as her mother had? Or is she struggling with inherited schizophrenia? This ambiguity had me flip flopping around for over half the book. I was sort of wrong on both accounts, but I enjoyed the ride. We learn the truth as Jamie does. I'll admit it was beyond anything I predicted. 

Don't be fine by the beautiful cover and inexistent settle on love triangle. Jamie's relationships with Henry and Graves feel less like romance and more like a volatile obsession. Henry wants something from her, and everything, including life and death, is a game to him. Graves just wants her gone before she's in too deep and finds out just exactly the horrible secret he hides is. 

While some aspects of the plot require suspension of disbelief—such as Marin managing to create an entire identity and fake a check at an elite school that churns out future CEOs and government leaders—the emotional depth and philosophical undertones more than compensate. Howell doesn’t shy away from exploring the darker facets of humanity.

If you're into dark academia and morally gray characters, Boys with Sharp Teeth is a must-read. Just stay away from any mirrors. 

Fang Fiction blends fanfic with vampire romance, giving us a story about how fiction can aid in recovery from trauma. Tess Rosenbloom is a former PhD student who dropped out of school after being sexually assaulted by one of her peers. Tess finds solace in the Blood Feud series and it's fandom. Her life takes a turn when she meets Octavia Yoo, a vampire from the books who is now stuck in the real world. Tess then embarks on a mission to find Octavia’s twin brother, Callum on the Isle and deliver a message that Octavia is alive. 

Tess’s trauma should be handled with grace and sensitivity, but it did become gimmicky? Romantic scenes would have her bring up her trauma? But a moment later she’s fine. 

The characterization sometimes lacks subtlety, and the plot sometimes feels a bit flimsy. At times it's a little campy and Tess feels like a Mary Sue, and there are instances of awkward pacing due to multiple POV.

New homeowner Ronnie buys a fixer-upper with a haunting past, and it might not be the ghosts haunting the place she needs to fear the most.

It was her house first unfolds through dual timelines—the present day and the 1930s—gradually revealing the secrets of the house’s haunting via ghost Bartholomew Sloan and the diary of the homes main, vindictive ghost, Venita Rost. Ronnie, grappling with grief of her late brother and having gone off her meds, purchases the infamous starlet Venita Rost's house with Ben's life insurance money, undeterred by warnings of its “dangers" - whether it be the fact every homeowner has died in the house, the asbestos, or the friendly not-quite-neighbor, Coty. 

The first 16 percent of the book outside of Sloans short chapters felt like watching one of those reality shows where people fix up ancient properties on HGTV.  Not much goes on but repeatedly letting us know Ronnie's brother has died recently. I felt myself skimming bits  because it felt like reading a transcript of Fixer Upper. 

Sloans chapters were the better ones. It's not often we get insight into a ghosts head. When he was alive, he was rather a Hercule Poirot. Though as we delve into his pov and learn from Venitas diary,  he was a great investigator. Not through merit, but because of some deal he made that inadvertently killed Venitas daughter, Priscilla, and ultimately lead to Venita orchestrating not only her death, but the death of her husband, Oscar, and Bart Sloan. Karma can be a vindictive bitch, but so can Venita. 

I wanted to love this, I did. It feels like nothing really happens until 85 percent, and ghosts finally come out when real life danger does. 

Having a wet, damp hotel is already creepy enough. Mold and mildew might be in dark corners, or maybe it's slithering little tentacles waiting to turn you into some monster straight out of The Strain. The Cut is giving vibes of Cuckoo, Slither, and mostly A Cure for Wellness. While I enjoyed the novel overall, it left me with questions, from plot to character development. One big one was the author seemed afraid of abortion. Not once was it ever even conceived as a option, even to immediately dismiss it. No money, no home, already have one kid, and to top it off: it's the baby of your abuser? 

Another was the lack of connection to the water. How was it discovered? Why hasn't it expanded if the little monsters are in a lake as big as Lake Erie? What do mayflies have anything to do with it? I think that could've definitely been expanded upon since it feels so uneven.