I wasn’t the biggest fan of this author’s other book, All the Stars and Teeth, so I was excited but wary going into Belladonna. It had many elements I usually love in a book, and I was hoping the book would at least by carried by those traits, even if I had similar issues with this book as I had with the author’s debut.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been wary at all. I adored this book, and I feel like I almost enjoyed this book more because of how I’d doubted it at first. It was wonderful and beautiful and magical, and I both adored all the little pieces of this story and how it later came together as a whole too. I listened to the audiobook of this one, and I also loved how it was narrated. The narrator had such fantastic voices for everyone (especially Death), and was able to imbue even more emotion into the book, bringing to life what was already on the page.

This book hits the exact same notes as Stalking Jack the Ripper did for me. A core central romance that has a perfect level of tension, a murder mystery that the MC gets completely wrapped up in, and a strong MC to carry it all. However, Belladonna stands entirely on its own, with its own strong themes of family and familial grief and analysis of court politics and freedoms (or lack thereof) that women have within high society. While my favorite aspect of this book has to be the Death (both the romance between Signa and Death and the magical powers and realm that comes along with exploring Signa’s powers), I also loved the family aspects of this story as well. This book not only explores Signa’s loneliness and desire to fit somewhere, but also the complex family ties that exist at Thorn Grove manor, and the tragedies created by the web of secrets and lies there. It was an emotional and heart-wrenching book because of it, but I loved how it all was explored, especially in the latter half of the book. In the end, everything just flowed so well together, weaving together the after-life and spirits, family history and grief, and the suspense and tension that comes with any good murder mystery.

I seriously can’t wait for the next book, Foxglove, and I can’t recommend this first book enough!

When I first heard about this anthology, I was super excited. While I’ve been able to find quite a few trans/non-binary books and authors, I’m always on the lookout for more, and this anthology seemed like the perfect way to find a bunch of new authors at once!

Unfortunately, this anthology didn’t entirely work for me. While there were definitely a few stand-out stories, the large majority didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I always run into this issue with anthologies, where I’ll find a few good stories, but also quite a few that don’t end up working for me. This one had less of a balance of usual, where there were more stories I felt myself not connecting with than ones I did connect with. I do still generally like the concept, though, and will undoubtedly be checking out the individual novels of some of the authors!

I think overall, there was just a bit too much going on. A lot of the stories required a lot of world-building to fully understand them, and while I normally love that, it doesn’t work so well in an anthology. When there are so many short stories that each rely on a lot of build-up in a row, it feels more like you’re jumping from world to world without ever fully getting the chance to dive in. It felt like most of my reading time was spent understanding whatever new world I was in, and not truly understanding the characters or story itself.

I also thought that for a book about ‘trans magic’, meant to be highlighting both non-binary and trans voices, it felt like the stories were largely about non-binary characters. Now, I’m non-binary myself, so I do love seeing this much representation, but it also felt like the anthology didn’t spend a lot of time on other trans identities. Now, I know one anthology isn’t going to be able to check all the boxes, but I feel like a different title or tagline might’ve made sense.

Overall, while I did generally enjoy this anthology and found some more authors to check out, it just didn’t entirely work for me as an individual book.

I enjoyed this book but just didn’t end up loving it, unfortunately. Surprisingly, I ended up liking the final third the most, which rarely happens in a romance for me! But it also shows that I had a hard time getting into the book overall, as normally the initial meeting and the exciting build-up is my favorite part of the book. It just took me a long time to see any sort of spark between the two main characters, and I just wasn’t entirely convinced by the whole premise/background either, until near the end.

It’s tough to review because while I did generally have fun with the book, it just wasn’t my favorite. I think the main issue for me was just missing the spark between the two main characters throughout most of the book. It felt like things moved too fast for them, switching quickly from fake dating/marriage to actually being into each other. And while I did how they handled it together, and how open and communicative they were about their boundaries and feelings, I just needed to see a bit more build-up first!

I also feel like there was just so much going on sometimes that it was easy for the romance itself to get lost. It was especially true because of how many side characters there were, and it felt like we really only spent time on the problematic ones. It just felt like a bit too much drama and shitty people at times, and while I’m glad we got to see them finally lose, I also would’ve liked seeing more of the better side characters, or just more of the romance.

Overall, this romance was fun but not entirely for me, but I can definitely see it working for others!

I found this retelling very interesting because it seems to deviate quite a bit from the original myths in order to make a different point. Because of that, I can definitely see some people not really enjoying this book because of it, but I personally ended up really liking the spin it gave on the original myths, and the new framing the story had because of it.

While I was semi-familiar with the myths this retelling was based on, I wasn’t recently familiar with them, and I think that helped! I was more open to the liberties that Heywood took with the source material because I couldn’t clearly see what exactly was new and what wasn’t, beyond some of the obvious changes. Myths in general are also fluid, and I feel like keeping the spirit of them is often more important than keeping the exact events, and I felt like that was still kept here. It was also fascinating to sort of focus on one character (Perseus), but only ever see him through the lens of other characters. It gives such an interesting idea of a character, and I’d love to see more stories written like this, retelling or not!

I also quite enjoyed the writing style of this book, and it worked well with the audiobook narrator I listened to. It just read very smoothly to me, and it made it really easy to just keep moving throughout the book. Often, these sorts of retellings can feel very dense and bogged down by fancy prose, but this book had such an easy storytelling style that it made it easy to keep on listening. I never felt like I had to take a break or pause for a bit, as my brain had enough space to process the book while reading it, rather than it being too dense for that.

While I definitely don’t think this retelling will be for everyone, I do think fans of looser retellings will end up enjoying it!