I highly recommend this version of Carmilla edited by Carmen Maria Machado who provides much needed historical context in the introduction and with footnotes throughout. It's also a beautiful edition with a few illustrations.

Casey is the most golden retriever character I've read. But also, a bi-king! Landon's journey was also so heartwarming to read, he is definitely on the ACE spectrum of sexuality. Holiday romance, but not centered on the holidays (more-so hockey season). Just a really wonderful queer romance!

🌶️4/5

I hate to be a downer, but this was just a bit too whimsical for my taste... I think I'm just not a cozy fantasy person. The humor was trying a bit too hard and made me cringe. I also wasn't into the fourth wall breaks. Then the narration from Hoid really irked me at parts. Sanderson says he wanted to write a book from Hoid's pov before writing more from that character, but I don't understand why he had to be the narrator for Tress' story. I think the story overall would've been more impactful from a nameless narrator, a more traditional third person pov.

Unfortunately me knowing going into this that Sanderson was inspired by The Princess Bride was a detriment for me, because it's one of my all time fav movies, so I couldn't help compare too closely. I recognize that's unfair and my own issue. He says he wrote it as "if Buttercup had gone searching for Westley" - I personally read it as if Tress was Westley when he goes away and becomes the Dread Pirate Robert.

I did grow to love the cast of characters on the ship. There was great deaf representation! The world building is really interesting and unique. This is my first Sanderson book, and I've been assured it's very different from his other books. I plan to start the Stormlight series this year and look forward to what I'm hoping is a more straightforward epic high fantasy series.

I'm sad that I really wasn't feeling this sequel. It felt very repetitive of the trope from book 1? I might decide to come back and finish it eventually, but not now.

(some spicy) holiday short stories. I personally realized I just do not like romance short stories because I’m a slow burn stan, which is the antithesis of short stories. I did enjoy some of the stories and characters so far but generally I ran out of time and interest 

🌶️5/5 (not all stories are spicy/open door)

When I first started this I didn’t know anything going in and so I was excited to be getting like a Groundhog Day, family vacation home in the balance, childhood friends to lovers. Plus set during the holidays. That was all great and funny at parts, but the third act “break-up” was literally so dumb it ruined the entire book. Jeremy does not deserve Mae, she can do better.

🌶️3/5 (Also the spice was meh)

Initially I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, it was relatively fast-paced and the world was interesting. However by 25% in the pacing really slowed down and got very info dumpy. It really lost me in distinguishing itself from other Chinese mythology based books I've read, which is a shame because I think there was a lot of potential for this to be something unique.

Really it was reading so much like a YA version of The Poppy War that it was a bit jarring to me the amount of similarities. That's fine if you're looking for a YA TPW, but personally I am not.

This started out really great, was definitely intrigued from the start. We follow Violet the Seer to the Kingdom of Auveny, whom often bends the truth when looking into people's futures. She divines a prophecy about the Prince that foretells disaster: either she must die or the Prince must. There was some good twists of fairytales loosely threaded into here (bits of Cinderella and Beauty& the Beast). I enjoyed Violet as a main character, she's very sassy, not at all concerned with court politics and realistic about life. She is at odds with the Prince and finds him to be rather silly, and they do have some good antagonistic banter. However, things dragged a bit midway and did not quite keep my attention. I think this was due to the other characters besides Violet being a bit plain. I have a feeling things could've been edited down into one slightly longer standalone, rather than a forthcoming duology.

If you're looking for a quick holiday read with great diversity rep where all the character's stories are separate but intertwined and come together in the end. This is it!

A bit of a lackluster follow up to the first book especially in the first half. Am I the only one who actually didn't want

Kate and August to get together?

. I was ok with friendship. Despite that V.E. Schwab really does have some beautiful writing, and there are definitely some noteworthy quotes in this book.