Urgh. I wanted to love this, I really did. I've had it on my TBR for years at this point but when I realised how short it was I thought I'd finally jump in.

The premise is that there's a sci-fi war being thought by time agents, held throughout history and in different timelines. Two agents, one from each side, begin writing letters to each other, first to gode and then of love.

It's one of those books which doesn't tell you much about her wider world/why's of what's going on. Normally, you're left wanting to know more, drawn in by the mystery of it but this went so far with this that rather than mysterious world building, it just didn't bother world building at all. Just none. So when it came to this, I just... Didn't care.

It was the same with the characters. It felt easy to lose track of who was who and through their voices, hard to work out what was actually going on. They were just too similar. Maybe this was the point? Maybe that's a way of saying how silly the war is but if it was that, it's never expanded with the length of the book so it just falls flat. So again, I just couldn't find a reason to care about what was going to happen to them.

We read their story from letter to letter, often with decades between. The letters are purposely written lyrically, in flowery prose. Maybe at this point, I just wasn't feeling it. When there's confusing personality free characters and no world building, these letters could have been a lifeline. You guessed it, they weren't. The romance is just confusing? They've never met and have sent what, a couple of vague letters? If we never get to know Red and Blue through these letters, how could they get to know each other?

I don't know. It's ⭐ for me. I would have said two but I would have loved to see more young adult saphhic romance when I was younger. This said, I also would have loved those romances to be good and surely we've come far enough today for this to have been better than it is?

I started this audiobook without having read the blurb, with a vague memory of a recommendation from a friend. I also managed to dislocated my toe and miss the triggers. 😅

I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did when it started. I avoid nursing stories usually and almost turned it off. This said, it quickly became one of my favourite books of the last few months. It's a good story and spicy, but most im ortantly it was funny because it was FUNNY, not because the spice was awful like in lots of smut books. 😂 I was laughing out loud so much and loved the characters, especially Josh. I especially loved that Aly behaved in a relastic way to the sexy masked guy she's been fawning over breaks into her house. She doesn't just go 'ooh a lovely normal thing to have happened'.

I wish more non-fiction books were like this. Robin Wall Kimmerer effortlessly blends her life and history into her knowledge and experiences of science and nature in a way that I haven't seen very often.

I learnt things about mosses that I hadn't known and loved that the main focus of the book remained on natural history and her indigenous and scientific knowledge of it, rather than passing too much into the unrelated randomness that some non-fiction books do.

It took me a while to get into the book. Scientific terms and ideas pass by so quickly that I felt myself loosing what was being said. When I took a step back and enjoyed it for what it was and went with the flow, it was a much more enjoyable read.

It did leave me super curious to know who the mysterious rich person was who she'd been hired to consult for was though! 😂

A well-written, depressing little book.

Putting to one side the struggles that they were facing due to money, I can't say any of the characters were particularly likeable. Perhaps Mattie was before

her accident

, but definitely not after.

Zeena is harsh and rather unkind. This said, she's a chronically ill woman who's husband shows no interest in her and her attempts to find a cure. Whilst he makes eyes at her relation/maid, it's completely understandable where a sense of bitterness would come from. With an implication of people talking about how Mattie should have been sent away sooner, you can see why she did what she did, even if the way in which she did it was cruel. Furthermore, at the end

after the accident

it's a sudden change to go from

heading swiftly towards death and in dire need of someone to look after her and her husband

to

well and able to care for herself, her husband and a severely disabled relative

.

Mattie is a naive girl with no one to care for her but her aunt (who doesn't speak to her) and Ethan. When an older man is showing you such kindness and making eyes at you, it begins to feel unsettling. Furthermore, it's more than understanding that

she becomes the way that she is when their joint suicide attempts ends as it does

.

In regards to his wife and Mattie, Ethan got what he sowed. Whilst reading, I found myself wondering if Ethan's attentions towards Mattie were one-sided, thinking that the book might take a controlling, creepy path. I'm glad that that wasn't the case. At the end of the day though, he wanted to

have an affair

and even though he couldn't follow through, he was ready to

kill himself instead

. He's all over the place as a character.

I love a book club where you leave thinking a book is better or worse than you did when you entered.

What Moves The Dead is simple and fun. It's not that creepy, not that gothic. There are so, so many simple ways that it could have been a lot better. But did it need to be? No.

Before I'd talked about it, this book was a generous four star read for me. It didn't pull me back when I put it down and the main character was dull. The ending was short and simple, and well - also a little dull. As a book, I didn't expect anything great from it and I got exactly what I thought I'd get. I loved the setting and the idea behind it but didn't know that it was heavily based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story when I was reading it, so perhaps it was this hat carried the bits I liked.

This said, the more you actually think about this book, the more frustrating it becomes. There really didn't need to be many additional characters. The nice neat ending doesn't actually wrap up the mystery but no one in the story seems to give a damn with it just becoming another loose thread. At times it's contradictory on key points and though a large (boring) portion at the beginning revolves around Alex's army past and how the army deals with pronouns, this information has no  relation to anything actually going on.

On one hand, a book with a non-binary main character gives representation where there often isn't any. Yes, there's the long explanation about people who join the army taking non-gendered pronouns but that could have been summed up in a sentence. But one could argue that's still representation I suppose. On the other hand, Alex isn't really portrayed as a non-binary character in the book. After all that introduction to new pronouns, they don't actually use them.

Also, you can definitely tell that T.Kingfisher is a children's book author as this reads more like a YA book than one aimed at grown-ups.

Maybe I've just thought about the book too hard now so I'll stay at my original, pre-book club ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

I don't know how it's taken me so long to read this book. It's creepy, like actually creepy. The story takes so many twists and turns and every time I had to put it down, I was yearning to return and find out what would happen next.

It's a story of generational trauma as much as it's a horror story about puppets. There's brilliantly well-rounded female characters peppered throughout the books pages. Grady Hendrix clearly has a hell of a way with storytelling. I can't wait to read more of his work - I've already ordered his new book!

Oh how I've missed Ambrose and Kodiak! 

I wasn't sure what to expect from a second book with the locked room mystery of the first books spaceship in mind. For this reason, in the start of the book It was lovely to revisit the characters but I was worried that it might fall flat. But let me tell you, THIS was exactly the sequel we wanted and needed.

Flashing back into the past and meeting the Ambrose and Kodiak of earth was just gorgeous. This is a proper 'I would find you in any lifetime' story. Mix that with the suspense when things start to click into place and the book was just glorious.

My only bugbear is the amount of times that Owl brought up being single/the only girl and how she didn't have anyone she could date/have a biological child with apart from her brother. It started to feel like she might be heading towards her and her brother dating. Even though they're not technically related in any way, I've very glad that that didn't happen.

There's great chemistry between the main characters but a lot of ignoring and immediately forgiving of some frankly abhorrent behaviour. The backstory could have done with a little more fleshing out (which I'm assuming will be done in the rest of the series).

Ultimately it's a sweet, short open door romance about firefighters.