Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

I truthfully cannot say that there was any part of this that I enjoyed. This felt like a ripoff of multiple popular romantasy novels and that’s putting it nicely. I think the ending did show some promise, and that’s why I’m giving it 1 star and not 0. Otherwise, Arla was extremely brash and disrespectful, which didn’t make sense for her character, the king’s assassin that was raised by the king himself. Hark felt like a copy paste of every other one dimensional broody but loyal male leader. Arla was another female lead that was “so smart and intelligent” yet consistently makes the dumbest decisions. The plot felt like a bunch of tropes held together with a dream. I was hoping for more originality and depth of the story based on the synopsis but I’m sure other people will love this.

This was alright. Entertaining, enjoyable. It has a very slow start, with a lot of telling but not a lot of showing, but overall it was a pretty solid mystery novel. I wasn’t the biggest fan of all the POV changes. They didn’t feel like they added anything new to the story. I liked that the ending wasn’t super convoluted in an attempt to “trick” the reader. It was an easy read, the cast was well developed, and I’d be willing to read more by this author. 

Well. This was as unenjoyable at 23 as it was at 13. This gets 2 stars for being revolutionary to the gothic genre and I loved the atmosphere of it but every character was such a shitty person, I couldn’t find a single person sympathizable. Brontë’s writing was good, her prose was insightful but the actual story was horrendous. Heathcliff was a pompous asshole and his son being manipulative and whiny was no surprise. And while I love spiteful characters, his obsession with Cathy, who could only ever love herself, just didn’t seem a good reason to make revenge justifiable.

Suzanne did it again. Completely on-the-nose commentary on the state of the world. Unfortunately for me, the stakes didn’t feel nearly as high as they did in the original trilogy, even with 2x the tributes.

I appreciated the parallels between Haymitch and Katniss, as well as the callbacks to characters from the revolution and why Haymitch so readily trusted the victors Katniss chose to ally with in Catching Fire. 

I do think the pacing was off, and other than wanting to/deciding whether or not he should

blow up the water tank

it felt like Haymitch wasn’t struggling with much internally, for example, whether he’d have to eventually turn on the tributes he allied with in the arena. He didn’t even have much of a drive to make it home which felt strange considering how much he was shown to love his mom, Sid and Lenore Dove. 

Finding out how he lost his mom, brother and Lenore Dove was a gut punch, but the book as a whole didn’t have the same emotional impact on me as the original trilogy.

Buggyyyyyy my beloved. I love seeing the beginning of his journey again and again when I need a pick me up. I love how Luffy picks up Nami for his crew 🥺🥺

Baby Luffy my beloved. I love seeing the beginning of his journey again and again when I need a pick me up. I love how he picks up Zoro for his crew 🥺🥺

This is such a cute story. I love all the intrigue with Davina’s backstory. I like the tension with Gabriel and his family. Mikey dominates every scene he’s in with his cuteness and the romantic tension between Davina and Gabriel had me twisting my hair and kicking my feet. It’s an easy palate cleanser. (Please come back from hiatus already)

This was awful. I had an awful time reading this. The writing was juvenile. The weirdness and tension was revealed too quickly so the first “twist” was called within the first 30 pages. The second “twist” was a cop out, had no bearing on the story and ruined any goodwill I could’ve had for the story. The romance/obsession felt forced and there was so much nothingness in the pages that I was annoyed when reading. That’s not including the numerous times the POV changed in the middle of a scene to force tension. I won’t be reading this author again.

Ooo I was annoyed by this one from the jump and the only reason I didn’t DNF was bc I had a physical copy. 

Now I do love a strong female character but Lupe wasn’t a strong character, she was just an asshole, ignorant and rude, not straightforward or headstrong. The boys were all stereotypical drug dealers and gang members, clearly Lupe was meant to be the “fiery Latina”, there was very much colorism involved w how Lupe was seen vs Marisol. The island was portrayed at depressing and broken down, completely disregarding the actual beauty. The Boricua Lupe interacted with were extremely religious for some reason, making the sign of the cross every five minutes, and the only Haitian character practiced voodoo, and I can’t forget to mention that everyone was acting extremely biased against Lupe for being half white for some reason. The whole book felt like an ignorant representation of what someone thinks PR is, not the PR I grew up knowing. 

That aside, the plot was also nonsensical, and extremely cringy and unenjoyable. Spanish was thrown in as an afterthought, and maybe it’s different now, but the last time I visited my family, everyone spoke Spanish primarily except maybe around the resorts, so to represent the island as primarily English or Spanglish speaking also felt very off. Like it was just more internalized xenophobia. I won’t be reading more by this author

Amal El-Mohtar did it again. Her prose is so lyrical and fascinating. It was one of the rare times where I wished there was more to the story I  sped through this. I loved that it felt like a fairytale. The magic system was peculiar, and while not explored too deeply, was explained enough for understanding. I loved that it was focused on sisterly love. I loved the non-binary rep. It was gorgeous. My only dislike was that the ending felt too quick for the rest of the story. Also the acknowledgements made me tear up.