sarahm's Reviews (69)

It’s cowboys, it’s a huge family that keeps taking in anyone who needs to be taken in, it’s sweet, it’s sexy. This one was about wanting to be seen and following with your heart (and I love that following your heart doesn’t mean having to sacrifice other important things). So far this series is nonstop perfect cozy romance, and I’m looking forward to the next one!

What an amazing take on fae and fae lands! The worldbuilding is astonishing. It’s simple in that it’s not cumbersome to explain or set up, yet the world has so much depth and intrigue. It’s one of the best fantasy worlds I’ve read in awhile. The description of the magic system is, again, not burdensome, and we only get the details of how it works: drum beats (amazing), divination as a practiced skill, and links to nature and creatures. The world described isn’t a nice place: poverty, endless war, and corrupt powers plague the elven lands; the fae lands - though resources are abundant and shared equitably - are hostile, close-minded, and militaristic. The war is a well-developed backdrop for the plot, and this is definitely a plot-driven book, though I would have liked more depth to the characters.

I felt like the only character I could really “see” was Lettle, who is determined to get home, but I couldn’t understand why or what connections she really has to home. Yeeran and Rayan’s motivations were rather vague to me too. I think another chapter or two in the beginning of the book to give something to root the characters’ motivations in would have helped me understand everyone more. I don’t necessarily feel like these characters are flat, I just feel like we weren’t shown as deep into them as we could have been, and the potential was there. I also think the romances fell a short for me because of this. Read this book for the world and plot, with the romances as a little side thing. I hope we’ll get to see the characters a little deeper in a sequel since the world and setting is already described. 

Alright, here’s my once-in-a-blue-moon thriller read! I don’t think I’ve read one since 2022! (The Storygraph says Killers of a Certain Age counts as a thriller - read late 2023 - but I disagree). 

I enjoyed this one! The style is interesting: the narrator tells the story directly to the audience, as though we’re listening to a verbal story from an acquaintance. The character of the narrator knows a reader is listening to the story as they are telling it, and it’s obvious to the audience that the same character would tell the story differently if they were just writing it down for themselves in a journal. It definitely makes you think about why the character chooses to explain things in certain ways. (And why the author chose to have the character make these choices…). 

The pacing is interesting too: the narrator tells us some parts of the story several times, adding a new piece of information for further context each time. The plot unfolds bit by bit. And the plot of this book – the reveals, the ups and downs, et cetera – are not about the murder. Those first two sentences of the synopsis are accurate: this isn’t a murder mystery. It’s a character study. The plot is about the main character. It’s a really interesting and neat way to tell a story, and as someone who doesn’t read a lot of thrillers and doesn’t mind that this one has pretty slow pacing… I enjoyed it. I think it’d make a great book discussion pick for the right book group. 

(Thanks to Celadon Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC!)

This was a really sweet YA romance! It's got fake dating, opposites-attract, "annoy-ers"-to-lovers, and a teeny bit of found family. The plot is relatively straight-forward and predictable, but thoroughly enjoyable, and all the tropes felt fresh rather than overdone. The main characters have very well-developed personalities, so it was easy to believe their motivations. There's a decently large group of characters, so given the length of the book (short and sweet), the side characters ended up a bit two-dimensional. Regardless, they're all lovable and the banter and jokes among the group are really fun and feel realistic. 
 
I'm a high-school-theater-nerd turned D&D-adult, so I definitely had that connection with the characters, but I think even if you aren't involved in theater or tabletop games, the book doesn't dwell on the mechanics and intricacies of either to a point that it'd turn people away. (It helps that the main character knows very little about D&D and the love interest knows very little about theater!) In fact, I'll definitely be recommending this to any readers interested in the fake-dating and drama tropes, regardless of their knowledge of theater or gaming.
 
Thanks to Delacorte Press (Random House) and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

Someone once told me that mystery writers used to write a different ending for their advance reader copies, so that no one truly knows how it ends until the book is published. I did a, like, 2 minute DuckDuckGo search and found nothing indicating that this is real, or ever was real. So I dunno about that. But oh my goodness, I wish with my entire heart that when The Frame-Up is published, I will flip to the end and find that it got published with a completely different ending. 

The first two thirds of this book was great. The premise is absolutely amazing - I was about halfway through and I was already writing a 5 star review in my head. That review would have started “If I had a nickel for every time this year I’ve picked up a heist-y mystery-y book and had no idea it had magic in it only to be pleasantly surprised when the characters are suddenly doing magic, I’d have two nickels.” (The other one was The Cartographers, and it counts as the same year because I finished that one on December 24th, 2022, and this one on December 23rd, 2023). But anyway, this is a book about art thieves who respect art, which is already my most favorite premise, and it’s also a book with magic (apparently), and it’s also a book about finding where you belong, and also eat the rich, and also it was even supposed to have some romance in it! So, basically, this book should have been perfect for me specifically. 

The following paragraph contains spoilers but all paragraphs after are safe:

Somewhere between halfway through and two-thirds through, I started to worry that this book was not going to end in a way I wanted it to. Dani left the secret world of thieves and magic, and has been spending her time using her non-magical skills to do vigilante charity work for people who’ve been wronged. At no point does the book show us that Dani misses the secret world, just that she misses her friends and family who are in it, and she maybe misses doing magic. There was even a line when Dani meets back up with Mia that, between the two of them, Dani was always the one who felt uncomfortable doing crime! And so wouldn’t the perfect ending be patching things up with her mother and friends (which did happen), but then choosing to be with the guy who wants her to be part of a charity with him and who uses his magic but not for thievery?! I had been thinking it was just a super slow-burn romance with an annoying side second love interest who would either betray her or she would just realize she doesn’t fit with him and his world anymore, and she would choose the guy who the entire first half of the book was setting up to be the endgame love interest. But instead she chooses to be with the guy who will never leave the secret world, and to go back to crime? This is literally backwards character development. All the ideals and motivations we learn about Dani in the beginning of the book are meaningless by the end. (And nevermind that the romance plot is barely there anyway.)

Maybe this is just a case of the author wanting to tell a different story than the one I wanted to read. And that’s fine. I just can’t help feeling that some of the narrative choices simply did not make sense. I’m giving this book 3.5 because I am truly in love with the premise, and the first half definitely delivered. And I really want more magic art heist stories. The last half just let me down. If I wasn’t obsessed with art heists, this might not even be a 3. 

 Thanks to Ballantine Books (Random House) and NetGalley for the e-ARC!