For 400 pages this book had me second guessing why on Earth I was reading it, until, at last, it snapped to attention in the last 20. Spoilers ahead.

For starters, anyone whose jaw hit the floor with the cliffhanger ending of Nevernight, is going to be severely disappointed when Mia does NOTHING to unravel that mystery. Absolutely zero time spent in this book pursuing the history of the moon, and what it might mean for darkin or other magical beings!

Instead, I felt like we were given /another/ origin story. If Nevernight was Hogwarts for Assassins, then Godsgrave is some combination of Hunger Games and the classic slave-to-rebel story. 300 something pages of Mia training at weaponry and poison-detection, all over again. Almost 400 pages of Mia making friends despite mental admonishments that she shouldn't get attached to people.

The author's artistry on the page, the echoes, the metaphors - they're largely missing from this book. This book reads more like a Michael Bay action movie: it's crude, it's gratuitous, and it acts like tripling the amount of vomit, piss, guts, and other bodily expulsions from the last book is somehow gloriously entertaining, the entire reason we're here... FYI, it's not; some of us actually cared about the characters and the plot... This book was a slog to get through simply because of how gross it was.

Yes, there are mega twists at the end which make me feel better about some things in hindsight... And also make me feel cheated! Once again, an "assassin" spends a lot of time trying to NOT kill people. And the final twist is just plain campy. After the lack of explanation for the moon twist, I don't expect a great explanation is going to be provided for the shadow-tentacle-man twist.

All in all, if you're looking for a tale of bloody revenge... you got it. But if, like me, you're looking for a magical world filled with depth, lore, dangerous surprises, and a strong heroine who undergoes some kind of character growth... this sequel might disappoint you. I won't be able to say for sure until I've finished the trilogy, but I'm getting strong "Catching Fire is just Hunger Games all over again but with a twist ending" vibes. Godsgrave feels largely skipable. Time will tell.

Imagine watching "How to Train Your Dragon", but randomly, without warning, the movie cuts to some of the most controversial moments in Game of Thrones. This book ought to have come with a trigger warning. I almost chalked it up as a Did Not Finish after page 130, but I checked the Goodreads ratings to see if I should give the book a chance to redeem itself... I read to the end, but I feel like the odd reviewer out; this book failed on many levels with me.

For starters, the Switching Point of View Characters mechanic did not work in this book. Not to name drop, but when another famous dragon enthusiast, GRR Martin, switched perspectives, it was always to propel the action and the timeline forward. But this book will give the exact same scene, with all five protagonists present, and describe every gesture and dialogue, no surprises. Or worse, will have all five protagonists undergo the exact same activity, with the same motivation, but in /separate/ chapters, so you feel as if you're reading the same scene five times over. There is nothing gained by naming the chapter after one of the characters in the scene. And sometimes two chapters for the same character are back to back, leaving me wondering if the author even knows what a chapter is at all. If you're not going to switch perspectives, why not simply have a page break? It feels as though the book would have benefitted greatly from scrapping the mechanic, and simply swapping perspectives within a single chapter, each chapter being a scene.

Another nitpicky negative, this book barely "dragons" before page 300. The major selling point is supposed to be the dragons. It has "Dragons" in the title. But the dragons are more often treated like horses, just tethered and left behind while the humans have their misadventures. Yes, okay, I think there is supposed to be a metaphor somewhere in how each of the competitors behaves a bit like a dragon(?). But I do not feel the cast of heroes lives up to the promise in the title, because 3/5 of them do not want to be a part of this tournament. They try to flee, or they mope and resign themselves to losing/dying; they allow the plot to simply happen around them/to them. They are rather boring to read about. The tournament may push them from obstacle to obstacle, but the majority of characters don't really take agency until somewhere past page 350. That's a long time to wait for a cast to DO something, and to hope that the audience is enthralled simply because "Ooo, dragons!"

But my big concern is the tonal whiplash of this book. Spoilers and triggers ahead. Sometimes this book is for children, and it joyfully describes a dragon race resulting in a firebreathing tussle which totally doesn't burn the dragonriders to a crisp, aren't cartoon physics fun. And then suddenly, this book is for adults of a particular constitution, describing the public vivisection of a little girl, or a boy whose eyes melted, or a young woman who was raped by her liege lord. These more mature moments appear without lead-in, and without respect. These scenes are thrown in like paragraphs of characterization: She had red hair, grey eyes, and feared having molten lead dribbled into her eye sockets. There is no sense that this book is trying to create a macabre atmosphere, or carry a central theme about suffering and redemption, or teach its target audience about how to endure through trauma - nope, these scenes simply...are. They /are/ there.
And I can't even rightly say that the characters are motivated by their trauma, because their motivations and characterization change sentence to sentence! In one scene, a girl will be both meek and brazenly spiteful. Or another character will worship structure and lawfulness, and then burn down a town. The list is long, and easily visible in my highlights, bottom line being that even after 400+ pages, I'm not sure I really /know/ these characters.

Which brings me, I think, to my final problem with this book: Its inspirations were obvious, but it does not live up to its predecessors. There were obvious allusions to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, etc... So many, that it feels like the author really enjoys dragons, and wanted to have a fantasy book... but got burnt out writing one. Nostalgia doesn't make a story. Everything feels unpolished, and just reminds me that I could be reading something better.

I turned to my husband at about the 300 page mark, and I said, "I feel like I'm playing YA Bingo." This book was HEAVY on the teen angst and melodrama, and very weak on the story. The whole premise of this sequel is that our ragtag group of allies is going to recruit /more/ allies, and then go kill Morgane. Spoiler alert, they don't really succeed at either. Instead, I lost count of the number of times characters:
- Lied or Lied-by-Omission to someone they care about "for their own good".
- Attempted to commit a self-sacrificing act, only to be admonished for acting a martyr, and then trying to /out/-sacrifice the person they admonished.
- Insisted they loved a character who was toxic for them.
- Hand-waved violence as a necessary evil to defeat a greater evil... only to falter and "refuse to stoop to their level" when confronted with said grander evil.
- Relied on prophecy/fortune telling/someone saying something is fated to come true.
- Hand-waved spying animal spirits, whispering woods, voices in their heads, and cryptic riddles from a wraith, a god, and the villainess herself, on the grounds that, "Meh, can't be that important, let's move on!"
- Got stuck in a self-deprecating mental/emotional spiral.
Everyone thinks they are worthless. Everyone is miserable and closed off from one another, a team in name only. Maybe that was the point, to show our heroes at rock bottom before they make a scrappy comeback in book 3? But it was painful to read 500+ pages of hopelessness and angst. Often the characters take agency in a sudden fistfight, but almost never do they take agency to /resolve a conflict/, which makes most of their pain self-inflicted.

On another note, what I loved most about the first book was that it took two people of disparate religions (a Christian and a Wiccan) and had them cautiously learn about each other, admit and work though their prejudices, and ultimately learn to love each other. That's a beautiful message: Other people have value; we can learn to be wise and caring without demonizing difference.
But this sequel seemed to go back on that message, adopting more of a conservative Christian stance. Women who practice witchcraft are doomed to madness. The lead witch, Lou, converts for a hot minute when hope seems lost, praying to God for help. Another spoiler alert: An actual to goodness Pagan nature god shows up... and is completely unhelpful, resulting in the death of an innocent. All of the magical characters in this story who /aren't/ Christian are bloodthirsty, sadistic, greedy, insane, or at the very least... apathetic. (Which, some people might argue that apathy is an Evil in its own right!) The Christian characters are lawful, compassionate, forgiving and courageous, even ret-conning foils from the previous book (like Jean-Luc and the Archbishop) to be sympathetic. Christians get redemption, magic-users get pain and suffering... It's a weird stance to take when you've made your audience fall in love with a witch heroine. Maybe I'm over-analyzing, but I personally was left uncomfortable and confused.

Finally, SPOILER SPOILER I HAVE BIG FEELINGS SPOILER, that nature god was Doctor Whovian levels of left-field silliness. First off, to confirm the existence of any god, and not just leave that to the realm of faith and interpretation, especially in a world with competing ideologies, seems like a cheesy misstep. Something in this magical place should be left... /magical/, wild and unknowable, beyond human comprehension. But then, to confirm that a third-party deity is real feels jarring. Imagine, Egyptians and Greeks arguing, "Anubis!" "Hades!" "Anubis!" "Hades!" and Mictlantecuhtli shows up and says, "Guys, guys, guys... Take a deep breath... Okay, bye." Yeah, can we talk about that? The god who shows up claims he can't interfere directly in people's lives, paralyzes Morgane, /releases/ Morgane, admonishes her with "Make better choices" and she responds with "Nope, murder! Hit-and-run!", and he... scuffs his foot and walks off to get a beer? Oh, and turn of the screw: O High and Mighty I'm Staying Out of It is Morgane's ex-boyfriend... How is being romantically involved with a mortal not the EPITOME of direct interference?! This god character was all over the place with his motivation and creed, and the book would have been stronger without him.

All in all, the book left me with no one to root for, no one I wanted to see succeed. And without a character to invest in... why read? Indeed, I walked away from this book many times, finding it too painful or nonsensical to read in big portions. And while I was ready to be done and move on, I was also reluctant to reach the end lest it tarnish my memory of the first book. I hope the third book can redeem the series for me :(.

An epic conclusion - on a scale I never could have predicted - for a tale of bloody revenge, the family we forge, and self-discovery. The breath-taking poetry I so missed in Godsgrave was back in force for the finale! I love the use of echoes and line breaks which mirror Mia's own actions and reflections throughout her odyssey. Every character is flawed, but their motivations are sharp and relatable/understandable; I was thankful that the book took true-to-character risks, and had tragic consequences, while also praying that the author would be nice and offer a glimmer of hope/a happy ending.

I have to say, the meta-commentary was a /little/ pretentious. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it there. But I forgave the whole self-aware book thing, because there has been a narrator all along, and I /was/ anticipating that the storyteller would be revealed before the end.

But compliment sandwich: This book has great messages about relationships, something I do /not/ often say about YA fiction. Sometimes, you love more than one person. Sometimes, you have to choose to take a risk on someone; true love doesn't just /appear/. Sometimes, you love someone, and they don't choose you back romantically, and you have to accept and respect, but also you can show love for them in another way: by helping them achieve their goals.

Honest Feelings is the theme at the core of this conclusion: Who we become when we let rage, love, fear, greed, jealousy, anguish, empathy, rule us. The Many Are One.

Up until the last 20 pages, I was enthralled by the writing in this book. There are so many echoes, it reads like someone trying to recall a memory from long ago, present and past and dreams and things-others-have-told-him all getting muddled. The fearful situations were universal and real.
The ending, by contrast, was a little hokey, and I found myself hoping for just one more turn of the screw to make it "realer" again.
A heart-pounding page-turner, for sure! Well worth the read.

I am grading this book harshly because I had been expecting something either supernatural, or a little more manic-pixie-dream-boy/quirky road trip, and instead discovered that this book is New Americana. I hate Americana. I don't see the romance in a truck, a dog, a beer, a diner, the open road and the even more open sky. I hate Steinbeck and Hemingway and Salinger, and talking about minutiae as if it means the world, and watching a protagonist struggle with their /thoughts/ for 400 pages before abruptly ending. Fair warning, I'm a biased critic on this one. Spoilers ahead:

First off, props where props are due, I appreciated what this book was /trying/ to do. I like that this generation's coming-of-age-in-America story is about being a descendant of immigrants and being queer, and not really understanding one's own body, or place in the world, or how to find "normal"/feel secure. And I appreciated the motif of everyone carries a private war or storm around inside themselves, and is forever hurting and healing and becoming someone new.

I did /not/ appreciate the mechanics Sáenz used to sell these themes. For a narrator who's not keen on talking, this book is surprisingly dialogue heavy, but the dialogue is awkward and either pithy or self-righteous. I didn't believe in Dante or Aristotle as characters, either. So they're not jocks, fine. So, they like to write or draw, makes sense. Ari doesn't like TV? Doubtful. Dante spends whole hours reading /poetry/ to Ari, or sketching him, or writing him snail mail asking if he enjoys masturbating??? No boy ever - be they artistic, queer, shy, whatever - acts like this at 15-17 years old. It was too much to believe.

And the book itself didn't seem to believe that this was a queer love story. Ari insists until the very last page of the book that he's "just friends" with Dante. There are enough clues between the lines that one /could/ read this as a love story. But the book could have told just as important a message about a platonic relationship between a queer teen and a straight teen: Sometimes you desperately love someone even if it's not sexual; Sometimes the person you're crushing on doesn't feel the same way back and that can make or break a friendship; Sometimes someone we love comes into our lives for only a short while and changes us profoundly, but we go our separate ways; Sometimes you need an ally more than you need a boyfriend, etc. I feel like most My Fair Lady fans did when the play was adapted to film: Yes, you COULD read a romance between Higgins and Eliza, but the story is stronger when it's about a lop-sided relationship which Eliza /outgrows/ and /leaves behind/.

And as much as I love queer representation, I found Dante to be toxic. Red flags:
1) Dante bathes Ari, insisting he has consent from Ari's mom, and that it won't be weird. He doesn't exactly /ask/ Ari.
2) Dante repeatedly pushes his desire to go swimming with Ari, even when Ari is sick, recovering from injuries, or the weather is bad. He doesn't consider Ari's condition, only how good it would make /him/ feel to be swimming (touching, wet and half-naked) together.
3) Dante keeps score of how many letters he writes to Ari, versus how many he receives, and guilts Ari for being less intimate/a bad friend.
4) Dante asks Ari for embarrassing, private details, like, "How many times a day do you masturbate, and what do you think about?"
5) Ari tells Dante he's not into boys, and Dante is not to try and kiss him. Dante ignores this boundary, and insists that they should kiss. Ari REPEATEDLY SAYS NO, and Dante ignores that lack of consent, kissing him anyway.
6) Dante and Ari get caught in the rain, in the desert. Without preamble, Dante strips naked in front of Ari.
7) Dante substitutes a different boy, Daniel, for Ari, and /tells/ Ari that he's using Daniel to imagine being with Ari.
8) Dante attempts to make Ari jealous by dating Daniel. He then gets angry when he, seemingly, was unsuccessful, and Ari didn't follow them to a party to prove any hidden feelings for Dante.
9) Dante ends their friendship because Ari won't be in a relationship with him.
Many of these moments are meant to be cute, or are meant to illustrate that these boys belong together (Some boys belong to the summer sun, others to the storm. These boys are always wet. You get it? Metaphors!). But I found it disturbing how many times Dante tries to manipulate Ari, instead of being a good friend/partner in his own right. I know another one of the themes in this book is how we don't always make the right decisions, especially when we're being ruled by our feelings, and I suppose I should cut Dante some slack for being a teenager in love? But "Boys Will Be Boys" is a toxic message, one the current generation has desperately sought to combat; you shouldn't forgive grooming or abuse just because a boy was horny. And gay characters in fiction being conniving is an old, gross stereotype that recent fiction has ALSO striven to correct. Positive representation is important. How we write queer characters is important. Believe it or not, dear readers, audiences are impressionable! Shock! A book has the ability to inspire compassion, or inspire fear... I think Dante is poor queer representation, and I think he feeds some people's fears that gay people are predators. I think the reveal that Bernardo murdered a transvestite double underscores that fear. I think, without meaning to, this book actually reinforced the arguments of people who would decry queer folk.

Circling all the way back to the beginning: The title. Did this book deliver on its promise?... Kind of? What "secrets" did Aristotle and Dante really discover? That some boys like kissing boys? That people, in general, have more going on inside than they share outside? That dogs are perpetually happy, and humans are not? I'm not sure the "secrets" really counted as secrets, and the self-discoveries the protagonists make were kind of no-brainers. The biggest one of all being when Ari's parents have to /tell/ him he's in love with Dante; Ari doesn't figure that secret out for himself. I found Ari's philosophical musings to be immature - well-written for a teen voice, certainly, but underwhelming to an adult audience. I caught myself rolling my eyes or yelling at the book, unimpressed that Ari took so long to discover some things, or considered basic common sense to be "secrets" at all.

Someone will enjoy this book. Just not me :/.

A twisting, paranormal, whodunit, this book is not for the faint of heart... or stomach. Major trigger warnings. But it's a mesmerizing, must-read. The book tackles some very mature themes about how girls - especially descendants of immigrants - are mistreated by American society. Girls whose lives fall into an ugly truth - drug trafficking, sex trafficking, abuse, poverty, homelessness - are treated as invisible or expendable. Entire economic systems - be they high society or low - are built on the exploitation of young women. This book delivers a heroine who dares to do more than survive in a rigged system: she demands respect from her abusers, defies the limits set on her, shows compassion for others despite her own suffering, and forges herself into someone proactive and chivalrous. Galaxy Stern is right up there with Mia Corvere (Nevernight) and Julia Wicker (The Magicians) in the Bad@$$ Girls Club.

DNF :/. It's clearly Black Wolf of Wall Street, and that's fine; using your writing to highlight the disparity between races in the American workforce is important. But the book's "humor" is unnecessarily vulgar and racist. I only read as far as p.77, and had to stop, because my delicate little snowflake inner ear couldn't handle hearing:
- White people referred to as pigment-deficient, mayonnaise-loving, Seinfeld-watching, Columbus-Day-celebrating WASPs.
- A white woman's smile described as "beaming like a firefly's ass."
- A suicide attempt referred to as "selfish" because it occurred on a subway track, and slowed the protagonist's commute.
- Constantly using the word "retard" in a derogatory manner.
I had to stop. Having a message is a great thing. But wrapping it up in sputum... who is going to listen to you?
Maybe somebody won't mind the trash talk, and will appreciate this book more. I was not that somebody :/.

I found this book charming, funny, and EXTREMELY relatable. Tsukiko is every girl who's been told she's not "feminine" enough. A slice of life tale about a near-middle-aged woman who becomes companions with her former high school literature teacher (who is 30 years her senior). The pair are equally blunt, whimsical, socially anxious and desperately lonely. What begins as companionship deepens into a life-changing, meaningful relationship.

This is one of those rare cases, though, where the last few pages of a book completely distorts the entire book XD. Up until the final chapter, Tsukiko and "Sensei" (with many shy starts and stops) fall into a romantic relationship. I thought it was beautiful representation, showing that physical attraction and intimacy is not what's most important, or even a contributing factor, for some couples. Sometimes, love is being able to sit quietly with someone, or strolling through nature, or eating together, or feeling safe enough to fall asleep next to them, or feeling secure enough to speak your mind to someone... There are a lot of behaviors people exhibit, both within their own personality and in how they behave as a couple, which can foster passionate love, and it's as real as the relationships which use sex to form intimacy.
But the LAST chapter had to wreck all of that by having Sensei insist that physical intimacy is a necessary part of every relationship.
Another point, Tsukiko awakens to the possibilities of the world around her, after being shut in for so many years afraid to trust or try anything new. Being with Sensei makes the world more inspiring and desirable to her. I had inferred that she had learned from her relationship not to choose isolation anymore, even if putting yourself out there is sometimes stress-inducing and awkward.
... But again, the LAST chapter has Tsukiko quickly sum up that Sensei died three years ago, and she has not kept up any of the friendships or activities she made/did with him, instead isolated once more and crying over his absence.
I can just imagine the Hollywood producer adapting this book, insisting that they make it a happy ending: Tsukiko strolling down a busy market, marveling at all the life around her, fade to black as she walks into the sunset...

It confuses me that the original title of this book was "Sensei's Briefcase". There is some symbolism going on with Sensei always carrying around a briefcase, and in the end he's dead and the case is empty... But there is so much more symbolism in the book about the changing seasons, and weather, and how it mirrors Tsukiko's self-discovery and her relationship with Sensei. The change in title was smart. I wish whoever had told the author to do that, had also told her to drop the sad final chapter about the empty briefcase XD.

Can I give some quick applause too for the fact that this is a romance about a couple with a substantial age difference that didn't make me feel squicky?! So refreshing! These two were so sweet and funny with each other, they clicked across time and space, it was beautiful to see kindred spirits united despite all the stigmas in their way.

A lovely, romantic read. I highly recommend.

An incredible blend of genres: What begins as a zombie parody becomes the heartfelt, almost Romantic (not smutty paperbacks; I mean classic sweeping novels) story mourning the passage of time and the self-destructive final generation of man, while also celebrating the wisdom and majesty of nature.

The author has a gift with words, the highest compliment I can think to bestow upon a writer! She chooses her descriptions meticulously. (There was one instance early on, where S.T. the crow is flying away from danger by taking off awkwardly from a countertop. The line said he "huffed" into the air. And I /felt/ that, I felt the effort it would take to go from leaden to airborne, and the fluff of his feathers as he tries to inject air under his wings... One word, and an entire living moment was captured.) From colorful cursing, to poetic interpretations of nature's wheel, and to many many times over the relatable musings of a crow who draws nostalgia and meaning from daily little things, time and again the word choices were perfect. The moment was real. The feelings were real. This author deserves a round of applause, I wish I could bow to her prowess. I cannot wait to read more by Kira Jane Buxton.

Speaking of the relatable crow narrator! There were a lot of LGBTQA themes addressed under the guise of a crow finding his way in a half-humanized half-wild world! I was impressed that the author managed to turn S.T.'s struggles into an icebreaker for discussions about trans identity and queer struggles with self-discovery! Feeling at odds with your body - ashamed that your idea of yourself, your reflection, and society's expectations, don't match - is a universal feeling, but it's a cornerstone of growing up queer, and it's brave and poignant and breathtaking that a little crow could help people who aren't LGBTQA come to understand and empathize with people who are. Well done, S.T.! Amazing work, again, Kira Jane Buxton, creating a book that makes people want to gather and talk and /relate/ to one another! Bravo!

I will say, grudgingly, that I knocked off a star for two things. One was list syndrome? Like, the story is so nostalgic, it will go into a giant list of all the refuse in a scene: Wrappers, toys, broken vehicles, a shoe without a pair, etc. I understand setting a scene, or if the evidence were particular to a character we care about and were symbolic in some way... But after a few too many, a list is a list is a list. I had to force myself through these paragraphs. I get it, mankind is ending, move on!
The other gripe was that somewhere in the middle, the book changes from a zombie parody with a horror mystery to solve, into an animals vs. animals epic like Redwall or Warriors. If you like that sort of thing, that's fine. Personally, it's not my cup of tea. Animals having race wars was not as compelling to me as S.T. sympathizes with the domesticated animals who straddle the animal and human world and sets out to preserve humanity's history by safeguarding their legacy: their pets. A pet utopia would have been cute. Stumbling upon a way to protect or save humanity would have been cute too. But I am very satisfied with the ending and that's all I'll say about that <3.

A loving, not-too-preachy, story about how we humans need to look down at our screens a little less, and appreciate the "tribes" around us a little more. And also go for a walk, fresh air is the best. And also hug your pets, they are family too.

Read it!