shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

i liked this for a really solid portion of it!! i loved the characters, the art style, the writing was fantastic (honestly i’d still recommend it for those reasons). but the pace was imo much too fast to really understand the story (there’s also just too many substantial side-plots tackled that then are left in the dust due to the fast pacing). and the ending is extremely abrupt and very unsatisfying:/

it’s been a while since ive read an emily lloyd-jones book, so this probably would have landed better with me if i had read her work more recently (shared universe and all that). but as usual with her books this was enchanting, im just a little biased and like The Bone Houses best

this duology has destroyed me :))) i will never recover (god i love kodiak i love him i love him i love him i have so many large and indecipherable feelings for him)

i have many thoughts on this book.
i adore books about the music industry, specifically historical fiction about the music industry (you would not believe the amount of times i have read Daisy Jones and the Six). and those were the sections i loved about this book!!! the entire Diane narrative i thought was genius, i would easily give that aspect 5 stars. the thing is,,, a solid portion of this book was about Gala. i do not like Gala, i find her and Caroline and Rhonda as boring as could be in comparison to the Diane timeline.
if Gala and her friends had been cut completely, then this (at least to me) would’ve been more enjoyable. or even if they were just more interesting

ive been anticipating this book for about 11 months now and it was well worth the wait <3 i think dance is fascinating so ngl this book was made for me
i think the characterization was super good and just overall i loved this !!!

fair warning: this review discusses a suicide attempt that is in this book. i’ll mark that section with “//“ before and after so you can easily skip past it if needed.

this is a very boring ya horror :/ it had interesting elements— witches, sapphic, scary forest— but didn’t use those at all in any interesting ways (im seriously so disappointed that the sapphic bits never went anywhere). it also felt like the plot was a fever dream in a bad way, honestly im still not quite sure what the fuck that ending was.
//
content warnings would have helped this book greatly. there is an onpage suicide attempt that happens and is never discussed again at all (most egregious thing of this book imo, im kinda shocked that that was in ya?? like obviously suicide and mental health effect teens and should be discussed, but that discussion needs to be responsible).
//
there are also more things that needed content warnings, such as child neglect and parental drug addiction. 
i wanted this to be so good and it gave nothing except a lack of reasonable content warnings.

saying that this is "more horrifying than i ever would have expected" when this is a book about war feels ridiculous, but it's true.
this book is terrifying and brilliant and its about trauma and i think its really really good and you should read it.

im so normal about this book i promise i promise (im not normal at all about it.
love that in the character guide it had pronouns listed !! never seen that in a book before that was so cool

this was fine. nothing more, nothing less