Y'all, I have no idea how to talk about this book. I was confused and not entirely sure what was happening at least 40% of the time, but I was having the time of my life for the other 60%. The world building was insanely fun, the twists were unpredictable. There was a bit of infodumping at the end and tbh I'm still a little unsure of if I even liked any of the characters, but in the end I had so much fun reading this that I'm not even mad.

The Right Swipe was, for me, kind of just okay. I liked the characters, I think Rai did a good job with it, it just didn't really stick with me or do anything particularly different. It didn't utilize my favorite tropes...it was just kind of a textbook 3 star read.

Girl Gone Viral, on the other hand, I enjoyed significantly more. My anxiety is nowhere near as bad as Katrina's, but it's always really nice to read books with characters I can relate to on that level. It had a really good "cabin in the rain" trope (I mean...in this one it was farmhouse during an internet scandal, but still the same trope). Jas and Katrina were both nice to the point of ridiculousness which is honestly so so much better than romances about jerks. The side characters continue to be amazing (even though most of them were the same side characters from The Right Swipe).

Honestly, I don't have too too much to say. This may not be one of my favorite books of the year, but it made me smile and giggle and have a good time. And in the end, what are books if not entertainment?

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Yes, yes, okay. This book was ~good~. The mystery was compelling. The characters were interesting.

But I want to take this opportunity to highlight the two reasons I don't read much Adult Literature. (trigger warning for sexual assault, violence)

1. Unpleasant and frankly unnecessary graphic violence against women (particularly rape). I understand why these books are written. I understand that many people find the exploration of dark themes to be good material for a book. Personally though, I see far more than enough violence in real life. I have absolutely no interest in reading about violence against women. I understand that these themes in this book likely lead to the development of Lisbeth's character, as we saw her get angrier and angrier as the book progressed. I don't care. There were more women in this book that were named as victims of a serial rapist and murderer than there were women who were primary or secondary characters (and even some of these women were victims of rape separately from the serial murdering). I'm just exhausted by this use of rape as something that can cause a strong reaction from readers when there is very little discussion of rape culture or healing.

2. The inSANE attention to detail, far far far beyond what was necessary and what veering into absolute insanity. I have absolutely no need for a two-paragraph catalog of the books on a character's shelf. I don't need to know the specifications of each character's laptop. I don't care about this level of minutiae and I kind of struggle to imagine a person who finds these details helpful or entertaining.

Oof was this book so much darker than I thought it was going to be just from the summary. I'm lucky in that dark subject matter doesn't often affect me too deeply, but this book was difficult to get through, just because of the pain of it all.

I've always thought that books that can evoke strong emotions are the best books, so while this book leaves my heart extremely heavy, that means it was successful. I didn't feel like the violence was cheap or thoughtless, which is so very important in books like these.

I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel and more adventures with Lei. She grew a lot as a person through this book, but I'm excited to see her grow more into her strength.

I absolutely adore this series and this book was undeniably better than the Bone Witch. So why, you might ask, am I rating it lower? Because it took me over a month to get through it and for some reason it just didn’t hook me in the same way.

However. The story has matured past the relatively basic magic school plot of the first book and I’m always here for a good enemies to lovers romance which finally came to fruition in this one. The future portions of the chapters contained more plot, whereas those parts of the first book contained far less of interest.

On the other hand, and maybe I noticed this more because it took me so much longer to read it, but the writing itself kind of bothered me this time around? There were numerous times where it just felt awkward, something I never noticed in The Bone Witch, but ah well. It happens, I guess. It just kind of felt like this book was less thoroughly edited.

Hey Siri, how do you spell disappointment?

A Curse So Dark and Lonely is my favorite book I've read so far this year. So I'm genuinely shocked at how much of a letdown its sequel was. Rhen and Harper are no longer the main characters (maybe not even the heroes anymore), and instead we get POVs for Grey and Lia Mara, the daughter of Karis Luran. This is a formula that works in romance series' (each book about a new couple, relegating previous couples to cameos and off-page plots) but I don't think it worked here. Both Rhen and Harper acted entirely out of character and I could never really bring myself to care about Lia Mara and the other new characters. The plot was less interesting and just...disappointing.

So I'd actually already read up until this point back when I was keeping up with the webcomic on a weekly basis, but I enjoyed the reread when I finally got my physical book. Alice is excellent at creating a full cast of lovable characters and not just depending on one or two main characters to carry her stories. I also loved that Volume 3 tackles some more serious issues while still remaining as fluffy and fun as the previous volumes.