This is such a tough book for me to review, as I always find it the toughest to review books that I adored, ones that made me feel something so strongly. I’ll try my best, though, and hope I can get across just a portion of my love for this book!

Ironically, I read this book in a drought of reading (for me), as I finished it while visiting my family and being busy with all the usual family + holiday things. It was honestly exactly what I needed, though, as it felt like a long drink of cold water, one that could keep me sated for a while to come. And honestly, it did! I carried the remnants of Mer’s story in my head for so long after finishing, that it felt like I could dip back into the waters of The Drowned Woods whenever I needed to for weeks after finishing. It’s just one of those stories that lingers (especially if you’ve also read The Bone Houses and understand the connection between them, because that’s a whole other pit of thinking to fall down into).

I really need to commend the audiobook as well. It won an award for being an exceptional audio, and I cannot agree more. It’s one of those audiobooks that only serves to make the book greater, and I felt like Moira Quirk really brought Mer and the cast to life. It just added an extra layer to the entire story, and while I feel like I would’ve loved this story either way, I definitely loved it more because of this audiobook. (I also just liked knowing how the Welsh words were actually pronounced!)

This book was so much more than just a heist story, even though that’s what the synopsis seemed to really focus on. I’d forgotten that aspect of the synopsis, though, and I ended up loving what I found in the story so much more than if it had just been a heist. However, I do feel like if someone goes in expecting heist + found family, they might end up disappointed, since I feel like it veers away from this quite a bit. There’s still plenty of fantastic side characters and heist antics, but it also feels like the focus of this book is on other parts of the story.

The Drowned Woods is one of those stories where I can’t quite pick a favorite piece, as I feel like it worked together so cohesively that my love for an individual piece is also due to how it worked with the other parts of the story as well. I loved the lore that built the base of this story, but I also adored the characters and how they struggled and fought and lived. And on top of all of that, the writing was the perfect complement to it all, managing to connect the reader so closely to the story and characters, and carry the gravity of some larger scenes of the book. It all just blended together so wonderfully, and I can see myself rereading this again so many times just to revisit it all (alongside The Bone Houses, of course!)

While The Bone Houses is still my favorite of the pair, this book feels like such a perfect complement to it, while still being strong on its own. I’ve definitely found a new favorite author here, and I can’t wait to see what comes next!

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

Something about the title and synopsis have had me hyped for this book since I first heard about it, and I was so happy when I was approved for the audio ARC of this one! It ended up largely living up to those expectations, though I did feel like it was missing something. This feeling seemed to grow as the story went on, and I was left a little underwhelmed, even if I ended up still enjoying the story a lot.

First, I really liked the narrator and what she brought to this story. She brought life to the main character, and I just really enjoyed the way the narrator’s voice paired with both the character and the world. I was also just gripped by the story right from the beginning, and I felt like the narrator was able to deliver a lot of those early hooks extremely well!

After the strong beginning, however, I did feel as if the story fizzled a bit for me. My interest waned a bit, even as I was still intrigued by where the story was going. I think I just wanted more from the relationships in the story, especially the one between Helen and her brother. It felt like there was a lot more to explore there, but not enough time was spent setting it before the harrowing ending. I think the same can be said for Helen and Edith, in a way, though that one definitely felt a lot stronger for me. There were a few choices in the middle of the book that I felt like could’ve been slightly different to give more space for us to really bond with the characters and explore their relationships. There was also just a lot of plot to get through as well, of course, and not many pages to manage it all in!

I think this is the first book I’ve read by Polk, and honestly, it has left me excited to read much more by them! One of my favorite things about this book had to be the writing style. While I was listening, various phrases and lines kept sticking out to me as exceedingly clever or slyly funny, and I can’t wait to see what Polk does with a whole novel.

Overall, I think this is a great read for many, especially those that need a quick read in between larger books or series. While it’s an intense read, there’s this constancy of queer joy and hope that keeps you going throughout the story, and it overall was just a wonderful novella!

I had high expectations when I originally got this book, especially since it was being sold as the spiritual successor to Sadie, a book that I loved dearly. When some reviews from my friends started coming out, my excitement lowered, since the reviews weren’t all positive (and these friends loved Sadie as much as I did). I still wanted to give the book a shot, though, and see if it would still at least hit in some ways, even if differently from Summers’ other books.

This was, sort of true? Overall, I can’t say I really liked this book, and it wasn’t memorable in any good way, but I also didn’t entirely dislike my time with it. There were moments where I felt like I could see what Summers was trying to do, even if it wasn’t always entirely clear. I’m still left disappointed, due to the original high hopes I had, but this book did still make me think.

One of my biggest issues may have been how horrible everything was. In this way, it hit similar notes to Sadie, where there’s just this deep well of the vileness of humanity, and we see how it’s been put on a teenage girl. However, even with Sadie, it felt like there was enough light and hope to feel like the story and Sadie’s efforts mattered, despite all the pain. Georgia’s story here didn’t really feel like it ever had that light, that reason to keep going. Everything sucked and it kept on sucking. The abrupt ending also left us without any actual satisfaction this time around, in my opinion, and it just left me wondering what it was all for. In that way, this story may be more realistic than Sadie’s, but it also felt way more hopeless.

I also just didn’t like Georgia as much as a narrator. I completely understand she’s a teenage girl, and that she’ll make mistakes and decisions that don’t necessarily make sense logically. But at the same time, she never seemed to learn or grow from them either. Her view of the world and her supposed role in it has been very skewed by the people around her, but we never really see the mindset/view combatted, and she never seems to actually escape it. There’s not enough in the narrative to show that her thoughts about herself and her relationships (especially with men) were harmful, and it also didn’t feel like she really learned that herself either.

This book was also different from advertised in another way. The synopsis played up this mystery being solved, maybe to make Georgia’s story more similar to Sadie’s, but it really was just a background piece. It was more a reason for Georgia to hang out with a side character than anything else, and sort of just came up whenever it was needed to move other parts of the story along, instead of feeling like a full part of the story on its own.

I also felt like the story itself was often a bit jumbled, especially in the beginning. This was largely due to how the story was being told and how the different pieces were being introduced, but it made it harder than it needed to be to get a real grasp on the story and the characters. While it resolved itself later on, and become less and less confusing as we got a clearer picture of the timeline, it once again felt like a way to try to emulate Sadie, without actually fitting Georgia’s story.

Overall, I’m The Girl probably won’t stick with me like Sadie did, and the impression I have of it currently is still just, generally disappointing. I do think there were some good pieces here, but it regularly felt jumbled up, often when this story was trying to act too much like Sadie, even when it didn’t make sense. I will still try out future books by Summers, but this one just wasn’t for me!

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I read Ross’s The Queen’s Rising back in 2018, and utterly adored it. I was so excited to finally get back to Ross’s writing after so long (I’ve bought every single release since The Queen’s Rising, but foolishly kept putting them off!). This seemed like the perfect book to finally get back to her writing, with the combination of knowing it was an author I’d loved a book from before and an extremely intriguing synopsis.

This book is honestly beautiful. It’s a story about love and war, with so many dark moments and heartbreaking realizations, but with a constant core of hope and light shining from within. It’s such a comforting book in a way, as it feels like a reminder that no matter how dark the world seems to be, and how much you may have lost, there’s also something to reach for and strive for, and there’s always love. It’s a book that reminds you to find the beauty in the heartbreak, without actually trying to dismiss the existence of that heartbreak, and shows characters learning to be happy even with their sorrow.

A story like this is always a tough burden to bear for a writer, as it’s something that can so easily fail if something in the story doesn’t work. The characters have to be strong enough to feel the whole spectrum of emotion, and have to be able to connect with the reader in order to pass on the emotions. The world has to somehow be dark enough to inspire great depths of sadness and pain, yet still have a string of light to follow back out of those depths. And on top of all that, the writing needs to be able to properly convey all of it, without losing any of the meaning in muddled sentences or too dense descriptions. Somehow, Ross has managed all of this all at once, and she managed to capture my entire soul in this book so quickly. From only a few pages in, I was feeling it. I was feeling the weight of Iris’s fear and her responsibilities, I could feel myself being crushed by the expectations that Roman was bowing to, and that was somehow only the beginning of everything. The book just kept becoming more and more and more, until suddenly my head was all full of Iris and Roman and Roman and Iris. It was just, wonderful, and I already miss being in this book so much.

I cannot recommend this book enough, for so many reasons, and I can’t wait for the world to finally experience what I did, and see why I loved this book as much as I did. (Though at the same time, I almost want to selfishly keep it to myself, a secret just for me).

Even though it took me a long while to finish this after I’d started, I ended up really enjoying it all the same! I loved Rin’s debut trilogy, The Bone Witch, and I’ve been following their work ever since. When I originally heard they were writing poly vampires x vampire hunter, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. It ended up not being entirely what I originally expected from Rin’s original tweets, but honestly, I probably enjoyed it much more with how it turned out!

I think the main struggle with this book, for me, was that it took me a bit to get into it. The world is quite intense and large, and our guide through it, Remy, is locked out of a lot of doors, even if he’s one of the best vampire hunters currently. While the isolation makes sense, it does mean there’s a large learning curve to the world and setting. In the end, I switched to an audiobook to help me get into the story more, and it was the best decision I could’ve made. Not only did it help push through the slower bits in the beginning, I also really ended up enjoying the narrator, and how he brought Remy, and his dry narration style, to life. It’s definitely a big reason why the book ended up being 5 stars for me still!

My favorite part of the book was surprisingly not the romance, but rather just Remy himself. He’s such an interesting and unique narrator, and I loved the perspective he brought to this world and story. He’s a skilled character while not actually being all that smart, and it works so well when put together with some of the other characters, especially Xiaodon and Zidan. While he definitely knows his stuff, he’s not an intellectual, and it pairs so well with Zidan’s scientific smarts, and leads to some fantastic banter between the three of them. There are also plenty of jokes at Remy’s expense, often made by himself, but it’s not done in that classically self-deprecating way we’ve seen in so many jokester characters of the years. Remy himself is far from a jokester character, but these small quips about himself and his (lack of) intellect are a small breather at certain points in the book, without any of it feeling too malicious or bitter.

I also just really enjoyed the romance and relationship between the three, and it just felt like a light point through most of the story (which needed some lightness at moments, due to the plot itself being quite dark). The banter was fantastic, but I also loved how the three genuinely grew to care for each other so strongly. I also loved that Remy had a unique relationship with Xiaodon and with Zidan, and that the vampires also still maintained a separate connection as well. It showed that while all 3 loved each other, it took on slightly different forms and shapes, which made it all feel so real.

I honestly cannot wait for the next book in this series, though I was a bit sad that I was left on a bit of a cliffhanger since I went in expecting a standalone. However, my excitement at getting more in this world, and with these characters, makes up for all the waiting I have yet to suffer through (probably… maybe ask me how it’s going in a few months!)

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going into this book, since I feel like mystery books are such a hit-or-miss for me. It almost feels like there has to be this perfect balance of elements for it to work for me, and so often either the mystery is too boring or the characters aren’t engaging enough, and I just end up not caring. Luckily, this one ended up working perfectly for me, even if I still have a hard time pinpointing exactly why! It was one of those books that seemed to do everything exactly right, and I honestly can’t think of a single reason to not just rate it 5 stars, even if it didn’t clearly feel like a 5-star book throughout. It was one of those books that you realize after finishing was actually really wonderful.

One of the best things about this book was how easy of a read it was. It was so easy to just keep flipping pages, and I found myself breezing through chapter after chapter. I think this was due to just a perfect blend of writing style and character personality, to where it almost felt as if I was just in the main character’s head, thinking her thoughts. It was a nice break in a way too, because it felt like I didn’t have to think too much if I didn’t want to, and I could just sink into the story.

I also really enjoyed how quietly diverse this was, with so many characters just being queer and neurodiverse without it feeling like a Thing or a point that was being made. It’s always comforting to read a book like this, where it feels like these things are just a fact of life and a way that people are. It just added to the comforting atmosphere of the book for me, especially since I could relate a lot with the main character.

In general, this book was a cozy, comfortable one, which is funny, considering the entire book is a murder mystery and there’s a decent level of danger and tension throughout. I think it’s just the way it was all balanced and written, and it never felt like this comfort hindered the actual tension of the story, either. It just happened to work hand in hand.

Lastly, I also just really liked the family dynamics and how it played out here. While the main character doesn’t have a great relationship with some of her family, they’re still a constant presence in the story, either physically or just in the main character’s thoughts. I just really liked how there didn’t have to be a villain or obvious horrible person in the family for there to be tension and conflict, and I really liked how this was explored throughout the story. There was never a point where you could truly pin all the blame on someone, and it added a lot of nuance to the story overall, beyond just the familial conflict.

Overall, I really enjoyed this, and I really hope more people give this one a shot when it releases in March!

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I picked this up after being recommended it by a friend, and it was honestly super cute! It's a collection of comics that generally just span a page, and they cover a wide range of seasons, topics, and feelings. While I didn't necessarily love every one, most were quite funny/cute, with a few stand-outs! The art style also fits well with the content, making it all feel quite 'silly', but in a grown-up/more mature way. Overall, it was just really solid, and a lot of fun!

I feel like these sort of comics could be made into a really fun daily/weekly tear-off calendar, especially some of the seasonal comics! While I still enjoyed reading it all at once, this comic style feels more like something you should read a few pages of at a time, or see a themed page per day (it could also work as a coffee table book, for that reason!) It kind of felt like I burned through it (which I mean, I technically did), and I feel like spreading it out over time would make it more memorable and even more enjoyable!