3 stars

A much better collection than the first one in this series, it felt very preachy but I understood why. The poetry here is about providing some form of hope and assurance that wrongs will be righted, and because in reality in this life many women will not get their justice, this book provides escapism and assurances that they will get their justice, that the perpetrators will be haunted.
Personally for me it was a bit too preachy, I wish there were more poems that were open to interpretation but still had a feminist core to it.

I don't think this book 'generalizes men'. It's very clear from the tone and themes in the poems that it talks about men who hurt women, who rape them and engage in rape culture. And I think it's a bit weird if every critique of men needs to be prefaced with disclaimers on it not being about every man. I think it assumes that reader isn't capable of critical thinking. It's like demanding a book with themes on class inequality and empowering the lower classes needs to be prefaced with disclaimers that this is not a generalization of rich people. Of course it is not, it is a critique on the system that puts them in that position that relies on the exploitation of others. Much like this book is a critique on the patriarchy.

Overall, this was a good read, it was a bit too preachy for my taste but I understand why. Again I wish the poems were longer so we could explore topics in even more depth (even though there were more long poems in this book than in book 1 of the series). I would have even preferred if we had less poems, but longer ones. I enjoyed the motif of witches and those who try to burn them being much more prevalent and consistent in this book than in book 1. And I'm interested to see what book 3 will be about.

All I have to say is that this needs to be made into a movie. A lot of interesting topics and themes were discussed here in a satirical way, that you could tell was satirical but was less funny and more fun in an over the top, melodramatic way.

This book discusses yellow face, the way Asians are fetishised, institutional racism in academia, self hatred as a Poc. We follow the main character learning all these things in the midst of breaking into houses to solve mysteries and plot twists. I like how every character is like a satirical version of people you can very much find in real life, and in this way you can see how every character has their flaw (ofc some more than others).

Idk that ending was just astonishing, when I get my hands on that conniving little scoundrel…
But I kind of need to see this as a movie and after putting this down and picking it up after a while, I zoomed through and enjoyed this a lot.

3.5
Not to be conceited but Daphne and Miles are just a bit of me. There were so many parts of them I could relate, their problems were mine, their fears my own.
And that sustained my enjoyment of the book, even when we got to the dreaded third act break up, which is where I usually lose interest in the romance (romance books should just end when they get together or they should have a problem they need to tackle together and then a happy ending. Break ups are the worst). But here, even when I felt like it was dragging, there was so much else to maintain the story, Daphne’s relationship with her father, and her new friendship with Ashleigh, they all felt complex and had their own conflicts. It just felt like a well rounded story, which is how I like my romances to be: getting to see fully fleshed people with entire lives meet and connect, as opposed to the characters who never seem to have a life outside of bumping into each other and flirting. I think what really got me was the ending. It just felt nostalgic, and dare I say so like a Wattpad ending. Everyone gathered around, the found family assembled and the book title name drop at the end too was so perfect. It was as good as the title drop of ‘I sold myself to the devil for vinyls… pitiful I know’. And that made me tear up idk. This is so far the second best contemporary romance book I’ve read (the other being a book I read when I was 12 and I’m hesitant to re-read it because I’m afraid of not loving it as much) and I am not a big romance book enjoyer so if you are like me give this a try, give Daphne and Miles and their funny antics a try.