shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

realistically i should like this, ive loved one of this author’s books before and ive been super into fantasy and romance (especially witches) lately — but this feels like such a slog for my poor little eyeballs. im going to put a hold on the audiobook and try it again that way !!

goddd not me sobbing over the final chapter of this book
this is so good ik ya fantasy can get an awful rep sometimes + magic schools are done so often in fantasy but this is so good please read it
protagonist is an anti-war horse girl i dont think you need anything else to convince you to read this

well i still don’t understand softball but what i DO know is that this is one of the funniest books i have ever read
already have the second volume on hold :)))

first book for sapphic september is finished!! used this for the prompt "famous sapphics"
this honestly set out to be a cute romance and not a ton more and i can really respect that, it did the job
i liked all the characters, the vibes were good, i love books set in the music or film industries, so overall the was just a really solid vibe
(also i promise you finishing an audiobook in under a week generally means i liked it really well)

ok i may have come into this one with a little too high of expectations
im aroace and was super hyped to finally see a book with not one but two aroace main characters!!! so like honestly i may have rated this book a little lower were it not for that

but unfortunately there was a solid chunk of this that i did not vibe with

there were (imo) entirely too many pop culture references/things that could only be understood if you were chronically online. and im someone who usually is not annoyed with pop culture references in books!! but in this it felt like almost every page was referencing some musician or some meme, and like in the kindest way possible memes read very differently in a book than online (especially since memes age so quickly vs the fact that publishing is quite the slow beast)

also, it felt like how upset sophie and jo were about the whole "you're wendy! YOURE WANDA!?" thing was ridiculous. just felt like way too drawn out of a conflict. genuinely i am the same age as these characters and i thought about "hey, how would i react if i found out my closest friend were running a parody of an account i do?" and the answer is i'd find it hilarious. cause objectively that is really funny

also i really don't like how this book went down the angle with Jo of "hates themself because they can't feel romantic love". it's the same road Loveless by Alice Oseman went down (and i could not fucking stand that book). i understand if that's a common experience for aros to go through (i never went through that, but my experience is not everyone's experience), but as there's genuinely so little aroace rep in books it just feels a little sad to have majority of aro rep be "i hate myself for i cannot feel romantic attraction".

ive had enough awful crap happening in my personal life that (though i love horror dearly) i genuinely just cant deal with the genre rn. will absolutely pick this up in the future but rn im in my fantasy and romance era !!!

stopping this because i am Fucking Hating This Reading Experience and trying to push through it is just making my headache worse.
part of this is just that im not into litfic rn but still!! this is not a novel this is a bunch of confusing barely-related short stories
reading this like “what is the POINT” and i think the point is pretty quotes and purposefully being confusing and i dont like it

thank you immensely to Netgalley and Peachtree Publishing for my first ever ARC! AAAAAAAAAAA-
i so genuinely loved this book omg.
this book focuses on three characters (and all of them get a POV!):
-Gisela, a rusalka (Polish water spirit). she wants desperately to become mortal again, and to do that, she needs a mortal to kiss her (she has not been successful at that yet).
-Kazik (my favorite!!! i love him so much!!! brainrotting over this man so hard while writing this), the town exorcist. hes been trying to send Gisela to the afterlife for a while now (has not been successful at that).
-Aleksey, a boy who seems pretty normal at first but... (he has secrets).
i adored all of these characters, and the three POVs were done remarkably well! each felt very balanced and like they gave enough time to each character to make you love all of them (again though... me and Kazik. i adore him).
i also really did not know any Polish folklore until reading this!!! so that was fun
read this if you want an awesome YA fantasy romance, i very much feel like this will end up in my top ten books of the year
(i need a sequel right now oh my god i need more Kazik. my beloved)

(probably) my final read of august!! perfect book to finish up summer with
this is honestly just a sweet, light, cute second-chance friends-to-lovers romance. dont listen to it being compared to Heartstopper the only similarities are being gay and set in england
i do think that this tried to tackle a little too many things and treat them all like the main plot (especially the reuniting of the old ladies). also there were some plot points i genuinely saw coming from a mile away

ahem ahem, her uncle being gay and Ritika (hopefully im spelling her name right, listened to the audiobook!!) liking girls, ahem ahem)

i also just didn’t really care about the fandom aspect of this :/
despite all these quibbles, i really enjoyed this!! it was just a nice chill romance to listen to whenever i got a chance and that’s really what i needed :)

yknow i was getting this up until ~70% or so and then i was like “yeah i have no clue what is happening now”.
this does remind me of The Giver, which is extremely cool, but yeah i did not enjoy this read much. i think the concept is wildly interesting, but the way it was executed was very :/
this being called dark academia makes me want to throw myself into the sea