This was a pretty fun story! I don’t feel like I’ve connected deeply with any of the characters, but Ren was an enjoyable enough protagonist to follow regardless. I liked how his arc was constructed. And Phoebe is easily my favorite—I smiled every time she turned up on the page. The main draw here was the plot for sure, with the growing suspense, the conspiracies, and that big twist toward the end that recontextualized everything. All of it  came together so intricately, especially in the second half, and it just kept me turning pages to figure out what was going on.

I don’t think this read is going to stick with me for a long time—I’m definitely more a character-oriented reader, and through no fault of the book’s, I just didn’t click enough with any of the fictional people here. But regardless, it was an enjoyable read that provided me with a few exciting hours!

This didn’t quite beat The Twisted Ones as far as my favorite horror books by T. Kingfisher go, but it’s coming as a very close second! I just absolutely dig the entire thing: the plot, the escalation of tension and horror, the sense of setting, the characters, the vibes. There wasn’t a single dull moment for me here. Just. The way the narrative unfolds? How bad it gets toward the end? How then it gets so much worse and more complex? Chef’s kiss.

I knew rather little about the novel going in, besides the basics like “haunted house horror with southern gothic vibes and family stuff.“ The cover, alongside the first couple of pages, led me to think this would be, at least in some part, bird horror. Without going into spoilery detail, that conclusion was debunked in a really fun way. I mean, the vultures are definitely around a lot and very important for the story! It’s just that there are much scarier things around. Like roses and ladybugs. (Fun fact: I love roses and ladybugs. Both scream safety and sunlight to me. It’s truly a testament to Kingfisher’s talent that she managed to make me fear both for the duration of reading this.)

My favorite part about the book was the relationship between the MC and her mother. Apparently, I’m really interested in exploring dynamics between independent adults and their parents, and I’m not getting enough of it. Edie—the mom—is my favorite character here, in fact. I really admire how she’s done her best to stop the cycle of abuse in her family and be a good parent to her kids. Yes, she wasn’t able shield them from her own mother completely, but she stood up for them and made sure they knew when things weren’t okay rather than normalizing those things. She really did her best to heal that generational trauma, and I admire her so much for that.

All in all, I loved this for the atmosphere, the twists, the humanity of the characters, and the great writing. Definitely goes on my “best of 2024“ list.

This is basically a Christmas special whereby we take a break from the normal proceedings of the Monstrous series, such as meeting new monsters and humans and watching them fall in love, and spend some time with the characters we already know and love in a practically no-stakes situation. Everyone’s literally just having fun.

As usual, I really, really liked most of the scenes that weren’t couple-focused. Like, just assorted characters interacting outside of their relationship. It was especially lovely to see new moments from two of my favorite friendships: Wyn and Edin, and Charlie and Hunter. I also enjoyed learning more about Anchor, though I wish her backstory wasn’t so sad. Can she have a second chance at happiness, please?

As for all the romance content, weirdly, outside of some moments between Wyn and Dany and then Ghost and Ari, I was kind of meh on it. Like, yeah, each of the couples got their share of sweat moments, but I think the balance of feels to smut leaned too much toward smut for me, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with like… how much everyone knew what exactly everyone else got up to, with consent often becoming kinda blurry in that context. 

Overall, I think I would have missed nothing in terms of continuity if I skipped this extra, but it has its fun moments. 

This was so fun! Not a particularly original story, but truly a great fantasy adventure with romance and friendship, hitting all the right beats at all the right times. I loved the author’s interpretation of the familiar Arthurian archetypes. Lancelot, Morgan, Guinevere, and Merlin in particular really captivated me for all sorts of different reasons. And the fairies! As beautiful and dangerous as they should be, and I’m so intrigued with those small hints at the sequel. Whatever else might Mab and Nimue have planned for Albion?

The artwork is perhaps the biggest selling point. It’s just plain gorgeous. Such bright colors! Such striking moods! Perfectly fitting for a classic fantasy quest with fairy tale vibes. I read this graphic novel super quickly, but I’ll certainly be paging through it again and again over the coming days simply to appreciate the drawings. The artist is SO talented, I just can’t.

Overall, this is a perfect heartwarming fairy tale where the knights are honorable, the power of goodness and friendship saves the day, and at the same time the villains aren’t irredeemable and the central conflict has depth and complexity to it, discussing the cycles of violence and how they might be stopped. I so hope there’ll be more!

Such a quiet, beautiful hurt/comfort story. I loved how these two slightly broken men—one grieving, the other running from an abusive relationship—came together to heal each other. The pacing felt perfect, especially that “two steps forward, one step back“ stage around the middle. I just found it so realistic, this careful progression of feelings and needs and wants and fears, all pulling the characters in slightly different directions, but eventually coinciding into a single track.

I also really liked the setting: the tiny town on the southernmost tip of Australia, with the southern lights and penguins and the vast, vast ocean. The way it’s described here is so immersive. I felt like I was standing on that shore watching the stars and the waves, or exploring the cozy lighthouse under the critical eye of that moody cat, or tasting fish and chips at that tiny local place. And the side characters that inhabited the place were all great, too. I particularly loved how Collin turned out to be an ally rather than a villain at the end. And Penny in that one scene with Patrick where she was so casually supportive, and Mrs Whittaker’s humor, and Frank’s cranky kindness. So many nice fictional people.

There were perhaps a couple of small moments where certain interactions turned needlessly sappy/over-the-top, but overall, the narrative flawed so well and provided just the right degree of feels.

I was lured in with two things—“gothic“ and “love triangle turned poly“—and I was kind of underwhelmed by how both were executed. The gothic vibes at least grew thicker as the story progressed, but I feel like the author missed the opportunity to gradually set up the mood at the beginning—something I tend to expect from gothic stories. The poly thing… eh.

Up until the very end, it read like your usual love triangle, until the MC was suddenly like, “Idk how to choose between you, can’t we all be together?“ and the two LIs were all, “Oh, yeah, well, sure. Btw, we have a history of mutual pining, surely the last chapter is a great place to mention it.“ There was barely any time spent on the LIs’ interactions with each other, and one of them was completely absent from the story for a big crucial chunk of the plot. Nope, sorry, I’m not buying this.

The book did have its moments, though. When the gothic vibes did work, they worked. I appreciated the complexities of Emile’s relationship with his aunt. Some of the side characters provided fun moments; I especially loved Annette who was probably the most practical and level-headed of the entire cast. The villain is appropriately, gothically villainous. The story on the whole is very YA, but I kind of liked how believably YA it was, with all the decision making and planning looking exactly what a bunch of scared teens would come up with. I do wish Emile was a bit smarter, or at least a faster learner, because honestly, I had way too many moments of secondhand embarrassment for him.

Also, a note to my fellow arachnophobes: the creepiest of all crawlies are very much present on the page, and there’s one scene that will probably give you nightmares Tread with caution.

I understand what this book tried to do, and I actually feel it did it pretty well. It’s just that it didn’t work for me. I actually like reading about teenagers being exceptionally messy, and I feel like the graphic novel format often lends itself exceptionally well to all of those exaggerated feelings and bad choices. But I’ve realized while reading this that I prefer it when there’s some external plot that holds the narrative together and can be juxtaposed with all the big feelings. You know, like the werewolves thing in Squad or the anime bootlegging in Forest Hills Bootleg Society. Here, though, it’s all about the feels and the drama and nothing else. Freddy, the MC, is incredibly self-absorbed, and also Laura Dean-absorbed, and she barely pays attention to what’s going on with her friends or anyone else, really. There are all those other characters floating around, and the narrative, through Freddy’s lovesick, confused, selfish gaze, barely pauses enough to let us get to know anyone—or at least that’s how it is for the large part of the story.

And like I’ve said, I get it! That’s the point! This *is* a story about a teen girl being confused and self-absorbed and locked in her own hurting! And it also did get better in the second half once Freddy’s started learning her lessons, noticing the cracks in her friends’ relationship that she just thought of as “perfect,“ and being there for Doodle. But with nothing else to focus on through the entire story but this one storyline, I don’t know, it was kind of equal parts underwhelming and overwhelming for me. Probably a classic “it’s not the book, it’s me“ case, to be fair.

Such a beautiful book! I kind of wanted to make it last, but ended up practically inhaling it. There were a few points where the pacing meandered, but overall, I was engrossed through out. Daniel and Gennady both are awesome characters, each in his own way, and they have the best type of enemies-to-lovers dynamics: the one where the characters have nothing against each other and could work quite well together, actually. Except they belong to big conflicting factions—the USA and the USSR, in this case—and those factions shape and bind them in too many ways to count. Their starting situation where they’re thrown together with the explicit purpose of harming each other by getting close, and they end up genuinely liking each other, but expressing it would cause harm, so they need to find a very specific balance… Like, damn, it’s chef’s kiss, both the concept and the execution. And then there were all the micro tropes skillfully thrown in? Like Only One Bed, right on time? I so loved how that one was done.

The book reads almost like a dulogy under a single cover, with the first half being the tightest with the actively developing spycraft/mystery plot, whereas the second half is more like… a very separate aftermath, a second chance of sorts. I liked each of them for different reasons. The first one had all the above-described goodness, while the second was more contemplative, with a bunch of really poignant moments. I actually really liked Elizabeth, Daniel’s wife, and her willingness to understand and accommodate her husband’s situation, as long as he extended her the same courtesy. I always love seeing female characters like her in m/m: well-rounded, neither evilly standing in the way of great love or being made these perfect angels who would sacrifice their own happiness for their loved one’s gay happy ending, with her own reasons and choices.

There was also some really great historical context and interesting remarks about politics all through the book. And fun road trip moments. And great food descriptions. And honestly, I just really, really loved all of it. I almost wish I didn’t binge it—then I would still be experiencing the pleasure of reading it!

I liked this novella less than the first one in the series, but it’s still solidly a five-star read for me. I keep loving what the series does with the concept of stories and storytelling. Here, there’s all this nuance about how a story might change based on which culture is telling it and why, or who it’s told for, or why it’s being told, and I absolutely dig all of that. I also generally found the layered structure of this tale so intricate and beautiful.

I feel like Chih is a far more tangible presence in this narrative than they were in the first book, now that they’ve kind of upgraded from a recorder to storyteller in their own write. Technically, they keep existing in the context of recording and telling other people’s stories, and yet in this new role, they show a lot more of their personality and even—in certain small tidbits—their personal history (that passage about pretending to be a junior ghost was so lovely). I’m excited to learn more about them in future books as their own person and not just a vessel for history. I also hope that Almost Brilliant is going to be back—I miss that bird.

All in all, this book really expands the setting with living and breathing elements, from tiger shapeshifters to mammoths to those small golddigging towns. The prose is beautiful, the way it sets the mood is top-notch, and I loved the queer love story at the heart of it all. When I say I liked this one less than the first book, I don’t mean to say this one’s missing anything. It simply doesn’t have some intangible, inexplicable secret ingredient, the kind that makes us fall in love with books because they resonate with something deep between us. So it’s about me, not the book.

If I could ask Alexis Hall one question about this book, I would go with, “Were you perhaps on a T.J. Klune binge when you came up with this?“ Because there’s a very similar unhinged vibe here. Not identical, but really, really similar. And I should note that T.J. Klune, due to those vibes, is a SUPER hit or miss author for me. And the version of the vibes here was definitely more of the “miss“ kind.

I mean, in many ways, this was fun. I snorted out loud more than once. I appreciate the unapologetic queerness of the cast. There were a couple of entertaining twists to the plot. And in the second half, the book even genuinely grew on me in some ways, most of them having a lot to do with Arabella as she started opening up as more than just the resident self-proclaimed gothic heroine. The first half, though, nearly lost me a good five or six times—I’m not even sure why I persevered. It was just so over-the-top about everything, from the character interactions to prose itself. Like, please. This prose is just too much. I was stunned by its purpleness in the prologue, then decided that maybe it was just because the prologue was from Arabella’s POV and she’s Just Like That, and then it kept getting worse.

Also, the repetitiveness of some dialogue scenes *stung*. By repetitiveness, I mean all those instances when a character would say something, and the other character would repeat it near verbatim, and then the POV character would also maybe repeat the same thing to himself in his head for good measure. I have a vague suspicion that if all of these instances were cut, it’s entirely possible this book would be a novella.

I really like the idea of this book; I’ve become really interested in intentionally modern-flavored queer historicals lately, I love stories with twins, I love the grumpy/sunshine trope and road trips with a purpose. But alas, the way it was told was just abjectly Too Much for me.