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471 reviews by:
starrysteph
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a true gothic fairytale: deep and dark and haunting.
We follow a bridegroom, a scholar of myths who falls fast and hard for mysterious heiress Indigo. They delight in each other’s adoration of legends, and Indigo asks only one thing of her new love: he must never look into her past.
But when Indigo is forced to return to her extravagant home - the House of Dreams - the bridegroom stumbles into clues from her childhood and struggles to resist the urge to pry, especially when it comes to the disappearance of Indigo’s dearest friend Azure. As the magic of the past takes over, the lines blur between truth and myth while the dangers become very real.
It’s a story of toxic, obsessive relationships. Of violent longing and a fierce need for safety and love. Predators and manipulators and those they leave in their wake.
The writing delights in the lush. It’s enchanting; it’s full of embellishments and plays with crafting false meaning out of simplicity or misery. It invites you in, mesmerizes you, welcomes you to savor it - then mocks you with a sneering grin.
This book is definitely for a certain soul. It’s designed to sit in this nearly-ridiculous luxurious place. If melodramatic word-weaving prompts an eye roll from you, this is probably not your story.
The characters are almost wisps, plodding along and being spun into folklores. There’s not quite a grand lesson here, but it’s meant to entertain - and for me, it most certainly did.
It’s far from perfect. It’s a little clumsy at times, and details are dropped or smothered. The gothic atmosphere of the House of Dreams and the Otherworld (where the young girls spend their days) is played with but could have turned up way more.
But overall - yes yes yes.
CW: domestic abuse, child abuse and neglect, death, toxic friendship, bullying, sexual harassment, pedophilia, suicidal ideation, animal death, abandonment, gore, self-harm
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
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dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A mysterious meditative cult within a bizarre once-abandoned amusement park? A strange ‘accident’? A swirling undercover dive into an eccentric community? I’m into it.
Seraphina spends her days working as a party princess and her nights snuggling her cat Heracles - but when her free-spirited sister Eff has a strange accident and falls into a coma, she jumps into action. Phina has to infiltrate the last place her sister lived (a goblin-themed amusement park that houses a cult) in order to discover the truth.
It was so weird. It was quite clever. It was often whimsical.
Shipp’s skill is in their masterful world-building. The park was truly a character. The descriptions were so good; so imaginative; so detailed. The imagery was crystal clear.
Seraphina’s narration also had a distinctive style that I found interesting, unique, and inviting. It was all just so inventive! I loved the specificity of each oddball character and the ways they nudged Seraphina along in her journey.
I also enjoyed the humor (both in narration and in dialogue). I totally “got” the tone and jokes and playfully burgeoning romance and it felt very casually real.
I was ready for more horror, actually. The narration has a very light, almost cheeky tone – and we never quite “dropped in” to full spooky madness.
I also wished there was a bit more resolution. I don’t mind a mystery, but the ending felt very abrupt and didn’t hold as much care as the rest of the book.
But truly - I loved The Merry Dredgers. It was sharp and honest. It celebrated the ferocity of sisterly love, and delved deep into grief, and explored vulnerability and trust and embracing the quirky and bizarre.
CW: drugging, violence, domestic abuse, animal cruelty, animal death, grief, injury, gore, car accident
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The Jump was an exciting, dynamic read that launched me right into an enjoyable adventure.
We follow four rockstar teenage puzzle solvers (with four rotating POVs) that make up the Seattle scavenger hunting group Team Jericho. Jax is the analyzer, Yas is the parkourist, Spider is the tech hacker, and Han is the cartographer with intimate knowledge of all the underground nooks and crannies of the city.
When a secretive vigilante group called The Order creates a puzzle with the promise of power as a reward, Team Jericho sees it as their only chance to combat the oil refinery that puts their community at risk. But they’re not the only competitors, and there’s a lot at stake …
The plot moves quickly and cinematically. The action was (more than a little) unrealistic as well as the tech elements, but it was playful and cheeky and fun and I was ROOTING for these kids. The descriptions of clues and solves were also quite clever.
The cast of characters was both creative and diverse: these are kids with vastly different backgrounds and life experiences. There are Black characters, Muslim characters, a trans character, a nonbinary parent character, a character who is sometimes nonverbal, lesbian characters, and so on. I think so many young readers will see themselves in these pages.
I really loved the depictions of families - and different kinds of families. There was also SO much love shown and valued here. Sibling love, new romance, trust & care from parents even when they don’t ‘get’ it, friends really supporting each other & taking time to understand each other’s needs, and a community coming together to support and defend each other.
At several points there were just TOO many things crammed into such a short book, especially since we only get a short amount of time with each POV. And I would have loved some more clarity around the ending (there were a lot of questions - some of them a bit bleak). I would be interested in reading more in this world.
CW: racism, violence, police brutality & corruption, fire, classism, gun violence, hate crime
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Violence, Police brutality, Fire/Fire injury, Classism
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A deeply chilling and clever twist on the Jekyll & Hyde legend.
In 1883, teenage Gabriel heads from the country into London to pursue a medical career at the prompting of his father. He’s one of the very few Black students at his school, and the head will do anything in his power to make him fail. But he finds kinship … and then something more … in fellow student Henry.
Years later - after the scandal of their relationship and the expulsion of both boys from the medical school - Gabriel returns to the city with a new job and a painful desire to reconnect with his first love. But Henry ices him out, and Gabriel discovers a newcomer in the Jekyll household: the peculiar Hyde.
As Gabriel becomes more desperate to uncover the truth behind Henry’s apathy, he stumbles into a deeper mystery. And things get … dangerous.
It’s not easy to be a gay Black boy in London amidst violent racism and homophobia. The cruelty was descriptive (though not too graphic for young readers) and difficult to read at times.
It’s a swift read that plays with monstrousness and brutality - and finding love in the most hopeless of circumstances. I occasionally found the writing style a bit cheesy, and the plot moved SO quickly past their years of initial romance. I wish we had a bit more spaciousness there in order to have a more fully-formed idea of “normal” Henry.
But overall, I found My Dear Henry to be a very fresh retelling with a brutal spin. It takes the atmosphere of the initial tale - and some of the subtext - and reimagines it with sharpness and depth.
CW: racism, homophobia, murder, death, medical content, violence, bullying, physical & emotional abuse, sexual harassment, body horror, classism, terminal illness, grief, vomit, gaslighting
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adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Yep. This is it. This is all I want in a fantasy book.
Jemisin had me in her brilliant clutches from the very first page. I felt like I was a little kid again, reading under the covers throughout the night with a frenetic desire to devour this story.
The Fifth Season takes place in a world deeply impacted by ecological disasters: seismic events that threaten the survival of humanity. The earth is deeply unstable; all live in fear of a land that they believe despises them and the reckoning of the next ‘Fifth Season’, which could be anything from acid rain to years of ash-covered skies. A group of people known as orogenes have unique manipulative earth powers – and they are both needed and feared by larger society. Orogenes help keep people safe, but their powers can be destructive as well. They are hated, murdered, and ultimately controlled (& exploited) at the Fulcrum, a brutal training school within the city of Yumenes.
We follow three POVs: a woman whose husband murdered their toddler (for displaying orogene powers) and kidnapped their older daughter, an orogene child whose terrified family has sent her off to the Fulcrum, and a woman in service to the Fulcrum who has just been assigned to ‘breed’ with a more powerful orogene in order to produce another servant.
Jemisin masterfully builds a world with fully-developed main and side characters. You feel their desires, their grief, their fury. Each narration is deeply compelling (and there are scenes from each segment that will haunt me) - and one is actually told in second person POV.
And contained and explored within a brilliant plot - systemic racism & oppression, subjugation & slavery, finding love and self in a world where you are ‘othered’ and inferior.
This is something new - but familiar enough to recognize yourself inside of it. It’s fiercely clever and original and addictive. Jemisin is a master mythologist.
“Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?”
CW: child abuse, child death, murder, slavery, genocide, grief, physical & emotional abuse, racism & (fantasy) slurs, torture, forced institutionalization, body horror, gore, xenophobia, bullying, rape, classism, animal death, pregnancy, kidnapping, pedophilia, colonization, suicidal thoughts, cannibalism, vomit, excrement, fire, sexism, transphobia, sexual content
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emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
A brilliant collection of essays on music, connection, grief, identity, revolution, home, and optimism. There were lines that made me shiver and phrases that gave way to incredible expansiveness. It’s soft and fierce, joyous and poignant.
“I don't fear what the future holds as much as I fear not being alive to see it.”
I love the variety of stylistic choices, with some pieces very linear and others more poetic - bursts of thought and emotion. I was underlining sentence after sentence, desperate to retain all the sparks and introspection. And Abdurraqib writes about grief and loss with such clarity and tenderness.
While I thought the book as a whole was incredibly curated, I found the second section much more powerful. I struggled a bit with some of the initial essays (with occasionally repetitive takeaways) that covered musicians and songs I didn’t know nearly as intimately as Abdurraqib. Occasionally, the most thoughtful messages were overshadowed by convoluted word choices that ultimately made the writing difficult to decipher. We danced
But overall, I was captivated by this book and these words.
CW: death, suicide, murder, police brutality, racism & racial slurs, grief, islamophobia, gun violence, hate crime, addiction, drug use & addiction, mass shootings, xenophobia, sexism, cultural appropriation
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challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sisters of the Lost Nation is a heart-wrenching mystery following an outcast fighting for her identity and the life of her little sister. A haunting, enraging, captivating debut.
Anna is a young Native girl struggling to find a place where she belongs. She’s haunted by childhood campfire stories and teenage girls who have never come home, her vicious peers turn high school into torture, and she has growing suspicions about her boss at the casino.
When her little sister Grace goes missing, Anna has to channel all her strength to bring her home. But between the boundaries of rez police, the sneering & haughty town cops, and the piles of missing person flyers that have never been resolved - it feels like an impossible job.
Medina beautifully incorporates storytelling, memory, and myth. Anna is fascinated by legends and traditions of the past, and fights to keep them alive while using them to make sense of her current reality. This is a mystery/thriller novel with a small splash of horror: Anna believes she is being stalked by a supernatural entity.
I found Anna to be an immensely likable main character – she’s both fierce and forlorn as she matures throughout the pages. Her family dynamics were equally compelling: smoldering parents who can’t quite communicate, her overlooked and invisible disabled Gran, her eager younger siblings, and Anna always there to reliably clean up their messes.
The back-and-forth timeline was very confusing at first to follow, and I didn’t really fall into flow with the book until close to halfway through. I almost wish it had been told entirely chronologically. But once it clicks … it clicks. It was impossible to turn away from the pages.
This is a story about monstrous legends … and the real, all-too-human villains that haunt Native communities.
It’s an emotional piece - and while the characters and events were fictional, the trauma of missing & murdered indigenous women is incredibly real. It will enrage you and devastate you.
CW: death, murder, racism, bullying, violence, physical abuse, self harm, sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, trafficking, gore, animal death, addiction, drug use, child abuse, pedophilia, transphobia
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(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Trafficking, Murder
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An uneasy dive into familial pressures, hierarchies, and trauma that highlights cultural isolation - and a slow-burn mystery.
Claudine’s niece Nicole has disappeared, and she’s determined to uncover the truth. So she steps into Nicole’s seemingly-perfect life in Nigeria, with a wealthy family, two young kids, and a mansion overlooking beautiful waters. But the deeper she digs - combating the detached family of Nicole’s husband and the tight lips of those who surround them - the more disturbing elements come to light.
Claudine’s current day search is woven side-by-side with Nicole’s timeline from the past. We watch Nicole slowly unravel amidst her difficult marriage and complicated friendships (many with fellow ‘Nigerwives’, foreign women who moved to Lagos after their marriage), and the two stories slowly come together as past secrets are revealed.
I wouldn’t quite call it “twisty and electrifying” per the blurb, but it held my attention with a slowly-mounting sense of dread. The cultural elements were detailed & fascinating (from the fabrics to the food to the strict hierarchies and pressures around social images), but occasionally the dialogue & writing in general were a bit too meandering and dry for my taste.
I could really feel Claudine’s frustration & guilt, and although some ‘twists’ were predictable, I still thought the reveals were well-executed. It was less about the surprise element and more about seeing the reveal through the eyes of the person narrating at the time.
It was also not my favorite type of ending - but there was at least some resolve and satisfaction.
CW: violence, death (incl. child death), murder, sexism, misogyny, rape, pedophilia, domestic abuse, toxic relationship, self harm, animal death, addiction, body shaming, classism, colorism, racism, slavery (discussed), infidelity
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Body shaming, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Classism
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A coming-of-age story featuring a queer & quirky teenage girl struggling with mental health … and a supernatural twist.
After a tumultuous Tumblr post sends her mom spiraling, fifteen-year-old Brynn is banished to the Florida mangroves to spend a summer offline. Brynn is stuck with her dad (who hasn’t really been present in her life for years) on a small houseboat with no phone, no access to online friends, and an overwhelming amount of catastrophic anxiety. But when she meets fearless & vibrant Skylar - who is trapped in the bayou - Brynn is determined to save her new friend.
There are parts of Brynn’s story that I found deeply realistic & relatable. She’s navigating relationships with parents that are well-meaning but not always informed. Her mom questions the validity of online friends and the worth of online friendships and is making parental decisions from a place of fear rather than thoughtfully considering the needs of her child.
Brynn’s juggling an overzealous punishment from her mom alongside not enough care or monitoring from her dad. I was surprised that her mom trusted her dad enough to watch her during such a vulnerable moment in her life (and he KEPT leaving her alone after she had proven to be too impulsive for such a lack of supervision).
I appreciated the honest conversations and depictions around intrusive thoughts, death anxiety, and belongingness as a young adult. The mental health aspects were by far the strongest aspect of the novel and I felt like the author was sharing vulnerable snippets of their own life.
The parts I struggled with all had to do with Brynn’s recklessness and impulsivity. It’s partly a teenage thing, but it also felt a bit mischaracterized at times. Brynn’s a smart girl and she’s also got debilitating anxiety - so why is she making dangerous decision after dangerous decision?
There is not a romance aspect here besides two crushes (one that could blossom into something and another that was unrequited). And speaking of the crush on Skylar, the unwanted & unwarranted kiss was a big miss for me. It’s another impulsive Brynn decision that she quickly regrets, but it was an unneeded predatory moment and added nothing to the story.
I enjoyed the supernatural elements & plot, but was disappointed by the ending & lack of closure to that arc.
Overall, I enjoyed The Immeasurable Depth of You and the earnest & honest conversations it opens surrounding mental health and navigating teenagehood.
CW: mental illness, panic attacks, death (child death), grief, suicidal thoughts, suicide, medical content, blood, vomit, injury, animal cruelty (fishing), animal death, ableism & internalized ableism, murder (discussed), biphobia
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Biphobia, Child death, Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
A riveting coming-of-age memoir.
Luma Mufleh is a compassionate storyteller & paints a full picture of her young adult life: growing up amidst a big family in Jordan, grappling with her identity without access to the language to describe her feelings, going to college and discovering herself in the US but feeling torn between worlds, fighting for political asylum and giving up all she has ever known, and eventually forging a future without her loved ones by her side.
The writing is full of complexity and love and anguish and sacrifice.
Her journey to ultimately accepting her gay identity - and realizing that in order to live freely as herself there is so much she has to give up - is heart-wrenching but hopeful.
Luma learns to forge her own identity. She discovers who is truly with her and who is not. She expands her understanding of family and both welcomes love from others and protects voices that are newly vulnerable.
Ultimately, From Here is a story about finding home.
CW: homophobia, lesbophobia, death of loved ones, murder, misogyny, sexism, war, islamophobia, racism, animal cruelty, animal death, adult/minor relationship, bullying, cancer, car accident, police brutality, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, panic attacks, religious bigotry
Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!
(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, War