leahrosereads's Reviews (1.04k)

All the stars for this beautiful story!  It had so many things that I absolutely love, but the biggest thing was the found family of misfits.  Perfection!  Read this now!!

To preface: contemporary romance is sometimes not for me. The tropes involved either don't bother me at all, or I find them awful.

Go Hex Yourself has some tropes and issues that I put in the awful (and gross) category.  From age gap to stalking to nonconsensual sharing of nude photos to nonconsensual groping (of sorts) to the mean bully of a LI to manipulation (honestly the list could go on and on), this didn't have much going for it that I was going to like, let alone love.  To top all of that off, there's a slur that's used regularly throughout this novel that had me wanting to DNF it.

If you don't mind any of that though, the writing is fine, and while the plot isn't really strong, I'm sure plenty of folks could have fun with this one.  

I'm just not the reader for it.

This was good! Were the characters absolutely over the top and ridiculous?  Yes. Definitely.  The influencers were obnoxious, our main character, Rafi, was everything wrong with true crime folks with theory after theory and absolutely nothing to back it up.  It cracked me up. Was it a bit too on the nose at times, sure, but it's YA, and I think this type of in your face satire is perfect for a younger audience.

Fun times! Definitely interested in learning more about Harbinger and Flint.  I don't tend to read a lot of spicy books so I'm not sure how to rate that but it was HOT!

Creature features and cryptid horror may very well be my favorite type of horror. This was so good! Yeah, was Addy a bit naive, sure, but it felt like in a way where someone is trying to prove themselves no matter the cost.

Of course the cost here might be her life.

Brilliant!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, of course.  Sure, is T. Kingfisher one of my faves and maybe rating this so highly isn't that surprising.  But, it's also my first non-horror of hers, and I'm realizing, I just absolutely love her storytelling method.  It's so good!  

This band of misfits will absolutely stick in my mind.  Bonedog at the forefront of course (sorry Marra), with the dust witch a close second (again, sorry Marra)...and Agnes and the Chickies as a close third-fifth (again....so, sorry Marra).  But make no mistakes, it's not because Marra ia bad character, it's just that all the others are so freaking amazing!

Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight is like nothing I've ever read before.  It's definitely a psychological something, though I don't think thriller is the right genre.  I don't know. It's very character centric, almost dreamlike with the POVs.

Like other reviews have said, if you like endings that actually end, I don't think this is the story for you.  That was probably my favorite part though.  Thoroughly enjoyed the last 45-50ish pages the most.  That dreamlike quality was at its strongest then.

There were some interesting creature feature moments but lackluster characters and some misogynistic writing made this a little underwhelming to me.  The setting was so strong, and several times the claustrophobia caused me to shiver! I'll give another book a go by the author, but he may just not be the storyteller for me.

My first Darcy Coates, but definitely not my last.  I really enjoyed the atmosphere and mysteriousness of this story.  Really dug the main character, though I was screaming at her to get the hell out of dodge way sooner than she was willing to leave.  Like, come on!! This was a fun, chilling time, and that ending!

What a wild ride!  I really liked the characters though we didn't learn a ton about them.  It was mostly the setting and the monster that made this story such a fun time.  I liked the urban legend aspect of it all, and that ending, oh buddy!  I'll definitely be picking up other books by this author in the future.