3.25
Fitz just needs to be protected and needs better adults around around him, he was really robbed of a decent childhood.
The antagonists of the story were pretty predictable and they were meant to be I think, but the plot twist about Galen’s lineage was interesting.
Chapter 18 was the best and the most tense for me because I love a good observing a destructive nuclear family argument.

2.75
This is not a toxic love story, it's about a parasite and its host, with the parasite believing they are inseparable, made together and must die together, whilst the host is currently sick and believes the whispers of the parasite. But in the end only one dies without the other.
This dragged and should have been 200 pages shorter but the main character was so self absorbed, as teenagers are but he was also so full of himself and his love for violence and manipulation was so jarringly paired with his self-depreciating nature, that it was unbearably very human.
The moral of the story is to never coddle white boy rage.

3.5
This was sooo fun to read, it never got boring.
Leah, Elias and Helen are all such interesting characters, the girls especially.
I loved seeing Leah, who was so scared and afraid and not that skilled at spying in the beginning, build her bravery throughout the book. It was so satisfying seeing her being self assured at the end.
I loved seeing the corruption within the resistance, the dichotomy of the Elias being such a skilled killer but actively hating it. And Helen who everyone seems to think is heartless, and Elias especially assumes the worst of throughout the book, but she just a stellar poker face and her empathy is just more contained than his.
I will say I didn’t care for the romance between Elias and Leah, I actually enjoyed the tension and angst of the Helen X Elias thing in the beginning, but I recognize they don’t work out due to clashing ideals and approaches to those ideals. But I still think there was more ‘alchemy’ there than what was told to us during Elias X Leah’s scenes. I think it should have been more slow burn, but I like how the focus is now more on the plot towards the end of the book, and it seems like the romance will take a backseat.
I’m looking forward to more messy politics, journeys, escapes out of prison and familial dynamics explored in the next book.
Also Cook, I need to know her lore! But she should have just exploded Blackcliff academy a longg time ago.

3.45

So happy to be back with my familyy <3
I lovedd the focus on Ronan this book, especially going onto his family property, learning about his father being a dream thief and the practising of dream thieving with Kavinsky as well as the car races. I do love the Lynch brother’s dynamic too and I hope Ronan and Declan get closer idk. Kavinsky was a very broken person seeking out danger and horror that could make the horror of his father trying to kill him more normal.

Also I knewww I was right to secretly ship Ronan and Adam, ever since we saw the flashback of how they first met in Raven boys and the way he beat Adam’s abusive father up. And the paying for his rent was the cherry on top.

We got a little progress with Blue and Gansy and I do love that for them but I think it was still a bit too quick. I also hope we get to see Orla and Blue get closer because I love annoying family members getting closer with each other. Gansy is also a bit of me, I too have a I can fix them complex and those I fix to like me whilst also being in charge:
I will say I did not care for the grey man at alll, and that’s why the second half of the book dragged for me. He got the final chapter apart from the epilogue and I was meant to root for him killing the brother he was saying was soo scary and formidable in under 3 seconds. That scene felt like nothing to me because I didn’t care what happened to him outside of being happy for Maura that she had her little side fling going on, on the side. They should have introduced his character in book 1, had him date Maura a bit then, then reveal he was going after the Greywarren and the guy who killed Ronan’s dad.

Most of all I love magical realism and this book did is so well, I am so excited for book 3 where they might be exploring caves and where Blue’s mum has gone, probably in search of something to do with Blue’s dad. I’m excitedd, this is such a good book/series to start the year off with.

Woohoo first 4 star of the series!
This definitely felt like Blue and Adam’s book whereas Dream Thieves felt like Ronan’s. I started off this series with Blue and Ronan being my favourite characters and now I just love them all, but I think Adam is the one that is written the best so I’m a little bit more biased to him.

But wow, I think the second half of this book had the strongest last 50% so far, I loved the caves, Blue and Jesse Ridley’s banter and convos, finding the Raven King’s illegitimate daughter, all the Adam and Ronan scenes we got, Greenmantle and Piper’s dynamic. Especially Piper, she was just so funny idk. Persephone mentoring Adam and then that tragic event was so sad. And even Malorie with his antics was entertaining. Heck I even tolerated the Greyman more. I will say what the heck was Maura doing there, she has a lot of explaining to do because there’s a woman down because of her. Also Gansy is definitely moving or leaving for a while or permanently tiene help his mother’s election campaign but he’s hiding it from the other’s. I hope the final book really focuses on his pov.

I loved that we got Neeve’s return at the end and that Piper survived too. I still don’t know what the heck is going on other than the Raven King is probably an evil entity not to be opened and the gang will have to maybe make a wish to save Gansy and risk the evil entity being released or leave him buried and maybe live in a dreamworld Ronan creates. That’s just my delusional theory.

The best treat was the song at the end of the audiobook though, I was bumping that.

3.25
I think the ending segment was the strongest part, it was so beautifully done and I can really see this being a fairytale movie. Of course the reason why the ending worked so well was because of what was built before it in the previous chapters. But I think this story could have been so much shorter and still have gotten the message across, like many fairytales have done. Even though the treatments happened pretty rapidly for a perfect candidate, the whole process started to make the story feel heavy. And I was astounded by how many times ‘Tom Cruise’ was mentioned in the book, obviously it’s because Belle sees Seth that way, but wow I wish it was a made up actor or an indie one because it was throwing me for a loop. He does have the expressions to play the villain though. I loved reading about a half North African girl, the talk about beauty standards was a bit in your face but I liked it. Much like Bunny I like how the main character shifts their perspective on a character they once found annoying (in this case Sylvia) but by the end better understands them. The way Belle talks about her mother makes it seem like she was never a good one, but even in those scenes you can feel the love she somewhat has for her daughter, it’s just love is not enough and you need to act, speak and address with love too. And she did make many mistakes, leaving her alone all the time, surface level care for connecting her daughter to her culture and roots to form her identity. The differences in appearance between them and no dad being present only exacerbated the envy she felt for her mum, the way she thought her mum didn’t really find her beautiful, that could be unreliable narration and just a projection of Belle’s insecurities or it could be true/true at one point but it was probably both.
The final scene between mother and daughter got me, idk why maybe because I was grieving too when reading about this book about grief but I loved it.

Again the ending really saved this for me, if this book had been cut in half (because I think it didn’t have as many topics to talk about as some of her other books so the page length should have been shorter) it would have a higher rating.

But I love the fever dream style of writing Mona Awad has, that’s why I’ll keep on picking up their books.

This book felt like a fever dream but instead of feeling like I was under the covers, I was under water. For how beautiful the writing was and layered the oceanography descriptions were, I breezed through this in a few hours, I was pulled by the tide of this story. I just love the just under the surface horror elements of this book, the open endings and mystery left for some plot points only added to this. I love how you can come up with theories on what Centre truly was and the aim of the mission. The descriptions and discussions of grief, how what is born from the water must go back to the water.
Kind of like Piranesi, the feeling I have after reading this is one of being doused in clear cool water, although with this story, the water is made of tears and more jelly like.

I think people struggling reading the book physically should try the audiobook, it really feels like a fever dream.

4.3 stars
‘And he began to dream’
Truly this book just beat my dead soul into life, and now I think I want to dream again. Isn’t it so lovely when a book can make you feel that? Oh marginal realism I will always be partial to you. I say thank you especially to the last 15% of the story for it’s hand in twisting my heart into attention. And for the story for tying up my previous concerns about the Welsh King plot line and transforming it into one of my favourite tropes: the whilst we were looking far ahead for change, the biggest changes and answers where right under our noses, where happening during the journey and not the destination. The destination was who we were on that journey. And shout out to Noah for delivering one of the best POVs that tied everything up and made it all the more meaningful, Gansey died and was revived to find the people that made his life worth living, his found family. All I miss is Cabeswater, I wish I had or could dream up my own.Listening to this via audiobook was the best experience especially with the music the author produced themselves, truly they are so talented and I am so grateful I got to experience this story with the enchanting lull of the music to ease me back out of a world of the Raven boy’s dreams and into my own.

3.25

I thought the story was going to be a lot more fast paced than it ended up being. The first half of the story was the strongest because the possibilities on what could happen and what path Lauren would take once her community walls eventually fell were endless. I also found her revelations and the way she shaped the world through the Earthseed religion to be most interesting when she when she was pondering within the walls. Her father, Corey and Keith were really made alive and it made her experiences with her family seem that much more intense. Once the community burnt down and Lauren began her journey with Zara and Harry I was wondering how the story would take us (with a handy time-skip) into hopefully a time where Zara had built a following and space exploration was imminent. Unfortunately for me that didn’t happen. The second half of the book really focuses on the terror of surviving beyond the walls as we see Lauren slowly take in more travelers, and see as one by one they become part of the community. I enjoyed this but after a certain point it felt a bit repetitive.

I knew she wanted to created her own community and that is what they ended up doing, I just think that if the rise and expansion of the earthseed religion takes place in the second book then I would have preferred the two books to be one instead in order to balance the pacing, because it seemed like nothing really happened in the second half of the book. I also understand that maybe the space exploration and the ‘taking root in the stars’ being the objective of the religious movement isn’t actually literal and that the point of the religion is just to help people now deal with the present and it’s change. And that the story in the second book might just focus on how the religion is used to build humanity and civilization back up to standard again rather than to explore the galaxies.

Also I know the book is begins in 2024 and ends in 2027 but reading it in 2024 I don’t think the story is too dystopian anymore, especially with the lack of focus on the religion and space exploration, the horrible terrors beyond the wall are a lived reality for many across the world (Congo, Palestine, Sudan and even people in countries that are meant to be ‘developed’ like the US).