shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

snake stole the show in every scene he was in. i love him, but other than that i felt extremely :/ about this book.
it being categorized as YA feels very odd, as i would call this lower middle-grade (not that lower middle-grade is bad at all! just that this feels severely miscategorized).
judging on the basis of it being labeled as YA, the story is extremely simplistic and it just generally does not feel like what it is marketed as (ik many people like the dnd vibes of this, but to me it feels quite surface level).
art style was also just not my thing, but of course that’s just subjective. i did like the character design of Thistle and the caterpillars :)
this’d probably be good for kids reading middle grade!! just should very much not be marketed as young adult

im teetering between 4 and 5 stars for this, so it’s 4.5 time.
this book is so cool ??? novels-in-verse i always have a hard time with, but this was written super well and i love every single character.
andres as an mc was awesome (but virgil is absolutely my favorite character from this book. he made me cry i love him).
i do wish that there had been more time between when andres met liora and renee and when they all got into the relationship. cause like all their interactions were written well, but due to liora being in a goddamn coma for most of the book it’s a little hard to fully see all the feelings and their love for each other.

on the one hand, i like this story, on the other hand, i greatly disliked the choice of having zero chapters and the fact that i see this described as horror so often when at least to me it is NOT horror
fine story though would recommend 

ive dragged so hard on finishing this so im marking it as read even though i technically haven’t read all of it. will actually finish the last few stories eventually
most of these stories were… fine at best. i liked them enough to not skip and go to the next story, but not enough that i really remember any of them positively while writing this.
favorite story was darcie little badger’s, least favorite was easily kerri maniscalco’s cause like im not a prude but why the hell are you talking about “his length” and going full adult romance in a ya anthology?? that was really weird and just badly took me out of this anthology and turned me off of reading her other books

god i love this book so much it is one of the most unique books i have ever read
it feels like a combo of studio ghibli + alice in wonderland + nimona + those little doodles medieval monks would draw in the margins of their copies of literature 

everything about weston becoming real

,especially the first time he shows up being IN IVY’S BED WITH HER,

is giving me very deep ick and i am not putting myself through a whole book of this

this was super cool at the beginning (im a sucker for fantasy that leans into folktale and fairytale energy), and i loved the concept of greenwitches and tatterwitches!! but at roughly 45-50% or so this became such a slog and i skimmed the last hundred or so pages
it was frustrating how much of greta’s life revolved around men, its like “girl!! you can do more than this!! go on your villain arc with that book!!” but no. didnt happen. this book lost me when it was revealed that

matthias is over a hundred years older than her

, i hate that trope so deeply and in this book it wasn’t even needed it was just a cheap cop-out to get away from the worry that

matthias is cheating on his wife with greta

.
pretty writing though :))

god this is so cute THIS IS SO CUTE
there’s so many incredible mg and ya graphic novels and this is one of them
reminds me a lot in vibe of two of my all time favorite games, Costume Quest and Undertale!! during the finale my brain was just playing The Legend from Deltarune on loop and it fit so well

im shocked at how much i disliked this :/ it was a read i was excited about for so long.
i don’t particularly want to make a rant review on this, as it seems to be a very personal story to alice oseman, but at the same time i am also aro/ace and feel like i do have the right to critique aspects of this that i deeply disliked.
almost every character falls into a stereotype~ the nerdy shy quiet ace, the slutty pansexual, the angry lesbian~ and i was reading goodreads reviews of this and it looks like sunil and pip fall into race based stereotypes too.
im so sad at how this book treated rooney :/
it also makes me sad that this seems to be the default book for aro/ace rep. ngl i think it only has so much hype because it was written by alice oseman and she has written some incredible stories.

im sure this is a wonderful book, but i just really hate when a series switches characters each book especially when i don’t know beforehand. had the same issue with the winters orbit/oceans echo books by everina maxwell.