This was an excellent read. The writing was lovely and i'm surprised by how modern the characters felt. Eleanor in particular was great and I love the idea she resonates more with the house than others. Really scary in places too!

Long review incoming!

I started this as an exercise in letting myself relax with a dark romance/erotica novel to unwind before completing a reading challenge. About 20% of the way through it became just an exercise.

This was an incredibly strange read overall. I understand Pen (can I call them Pen? I feel like we're close enough) wanted to have their cake, and eat it too. I understand this is meant to be a taboo read, but you cannot have the convention and the taboo, you can't have a 40 something yr old man (who legally is our MC's uncle) flirt with her only to turn around and act well, like her uncle. 

A lot of this novel was just very off-putting in a way that wasn't pleasant. The actual scenario presented in this novel is gross but almost nothing in the novel goes against the narrative that it's titillating or that you're meant to do anything but enjoy it.

I found all three men in this book deeply deeply annoying at points and I particularly didn't enjoy any of their unique flavours of misogyny. Kaleb in particular gets away with far too much and is rewarded by being the person our MC picks when he actively assaulted her and degraded her over the course of the book, even when he was meant to be in love with her.

I also felt like our MC's turn towards Kaleb was very out of nowhere as almost nothing indicated that she actually liked him until 70% of the way through when she just decides she does.

I did like our MC however and I thought her trauma was well done (and makes the "romance" more insidious as she's more vulnerable to being manipulated.)

Technically this wasn't a badly written novel, and the smut, if divorced from the surrounding material, is pretty well done, however everything surrounding it was either a slog, an exercise in disgust, or a boring hodge podge of whatever the author thought was an acceptable way for men to act. For these reasons, 1 star is all I'm willing to give it.

Mf really broke his ankle and made it everyone's problem.

This was a lot of fun, taking place in modern day London with a dash of magic, this was everything a fun mystery should be! Really liked all the characters, especially the MC (didn't enjoy how he talks about women however) and the pacing and world building was great.

Short and to the point, this was a great bit of insight into communities i'm personally not a part of, loved the bit about having a one sided conversation, resonated with me.

Very quick read, very sad, written pretty well overall!

Short, sweet, cool worldbuilding!

This is just everything to me, so funny and well written.

This isn't a bad book, the world concept is interesting and I love Kaiju/Mecha worlds but the MC is so off putting and some of the character decisions are very weird. I understand this is about misogyny but it's so unsubtle and in your face it's offputting and distracting from the plot.