shereadytoread's Reviews (806)

Disclaimer: I received gifted copies of the first two books in exchange for an honest review.

I read the first book (Review: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/4402f18f-8fb4-4c19-a65e-d74975cf751e) and decided to go ahead and read the second one in tandem to see if I liked it more.

Unfortunately, it relies on the same tropes that just seem honestly lazy to me. I ended up quitting around halfway through.

Again, it had a few elements that I really like and thought would be interesting. The shock horror theater along with the graverobbing aspect was great. However, we end up with the same tired reliance of the first book on bigotry. Instead of a homophobic town, we find an extremely racist villain. He refers to mexican immigrants as "stupid fence-hoppers" and more. There is also the weird body stuff again (not the graverobbing/dead body stuff). Focus on breasts in these books are ... I don't know what + casual fatphobia throughout.

To have such great elements and then be filled with the laziness of a bigoted villain with no better reasoning for his evil just comes off as lazy and empty. 

This book was tough for me to rate because it had all the makings of something great but it fell apart for me. I absolutely loved the first chapter and I was sucked in immediately. However, the remainder of the book seems to rewind and set up what we see in the first chapter so the story I was hooked by was not continued. I thought the horrors that Chris faced were so well written and the difficulty of what to do when you're trying to protect people in a town that hates you and no one believes what you're saying. I already have the second book so I will read it and see if these cons are resolved as this was book was primarily a set up for the trilogy.

Cons:
What I couldn't really work with was the usage of an indigenous indonesian culture to explain why the main antagonist is evil. It ran into the "savage native" stereotypes for me and just felt icky in general. (To my knowledge the author is not part of this ethnic group and I could only find a small amount of info posted on his blog.)

The treatment of queer characters in the book is terrible to say the least. They are all punished by the town for being queer and there is no acknowledgement of such or even importance of their sexuality outside of their suffering.

There is so much focus on these teenage girl's breasts, I rolled my eyes the 3rd, 5th and millionth time they were mentioned. It was basically like people were hypnotized by this child's chest. It was too much.

There were also mentions of incest between the only explicitly stated POC characters ...

Disclaimer: I received a gifted finished copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

 This was an excellent addition to the series. I enjoyed the introduction of new supporting characters. The representation of anxiety in young teens was so well done, and I loved the family relationships of the MC. The double use of masks/costumes being the conflict in parallel with the main character trying to mask her own issues was so great. This is grade A middle grade horror.

 

I enjoyed this book. I loved how she worked in so many different aspects of culture and mythology into the story. It did feel like a complete story but I understand why it is continuing into the sequel which I plan to read later this month

This was nothing like I expected but really great. A magic book that felt like it had nothing to do with magic and so much to do with feeling inadequate, fractured family relationships, rivalry and perspectives. Sarah Gailey’s use of magical schooling to look at everyday issues was so good!

This book was a fast paced dark magical adventure about a daughter seeking to understand the truth about herself and her relationship with her mother. 

Pros: 
- Fast paced 
- Dual POV kept the story moving  
- Mystery elements worked really well and although revealed earlier, didn't make the book anticlimactic 

Cons:
- some of the family elements were not fully resolved/addressed 
- one of the major effects of the "mystery spell" didn't make sense (see below)

The spell makes her forget her very intense and deep friendship with her neighbor/love interest and she doesn't recall but also NOT A SINGLE PERSON in her entire life mentions it to her? Her neighbor, the neighbor's family, her other friends, her brother ANYONE because "mom told me not to mention it" and he didn't for YEARS. Also once she is in danger, dad still refuses to tell her what is happening "because her mom should be the one to tell her" but her mother has literally disappeared.