There were parts of this novel that I really, really enjoyed: the overall claustrophobic feel of it, the focus on how a small community fares when they get cut off from the rest of the world, rationing power and food supplies while they don't even know what's happening beyond their borders and dealing with the hardships of winter. It was interesting to see how the cultural beiefs and old history came into play for these survivors. 

At the same time, I fill like there was some missed potential here. On one hand, there's a lot of focus on characters here: most of the plot is driven by dialogue, and there are a lot of character-focused scenes. But on the other hand, there wasn't enough character development. After finishing the book, I don't feel like I know these people I've been reading about very well, and I feel like the journey they went through could have been undergone by any other people placed in the same conditions. I think what makes disaster/survival stories interesting for me is seeing how compelling characters deal with them, grow and fail through them, encounter the darkness within themselves as the darkness from outside surrounds them. There was some of it in this novel, but not enough for my taste, I suppose? 

 It's weird; even though I'll be the first one to admit I have a complicated relationship with short stories, I always expect to find at least a few that will grab me in anthologies such as this one. But in this case, that simply didn't happen. For all of the promise this book held for me, there wasn't a single story that clicked with me. The closest was perhaps Light Bulb by Nevo Zisin; for the life of me, I can't tell you what exactly happened in the story, but the vibe was great.

I won't say this was a bad book. There are lots of cool ideas here, lots of great rep, lots of good writing. Lots of things I absolutely expected to love. But somehow, all of it just wasn't for me—I guess that happens? 

You say whatever you want, and I feel like I’m always screaming, deep inside where nobody can hear what I’m doing. It’s become so bad that I’m afraid I might start doing it out loud. 

 Such a wonderful story! This novella has everything I've come to expect from Courtney Milan's books: thoughtful characterization, fun dialogue, smart commentary on social issues, and a central relationship development that, despite the constraints of a novella, feels natural and unrushed.  

 The characters here are simply delightful. Bertrice in particular is the queen of acerbic wit. The Terrible Nephew truly lived up to his title, and seeing him get his due was the cherry on top of the cake. I also absolutely loved that the heroines of this book are older women: one in her early seventies, the other in her late sixties. So often, older people get automatically relegated to the position of background characters instead of getting to be the movers and shakers. I'm nowhere near the heroines' age yet—only about halfway there—and even so, I sometimes feel that it's getting harder than it should be to just open a book in my favorite genre and expect to see people my age at the center of the plot. I imagine it will get harder and harder as I get older. 

I also very much enjoyed the focus on the financial anxiety Violetta's dealing with, because, to tell the truth, this is an extremely relatable thing for me. I nearly teared up at that one part where she thought about how she didn't know how to want chocolate because she's trained herself to only want things that she could afford with some work, things that were actually in her reach.  

 All in all, this was a great romance to spend an evening with, and I already miss these two characters.

 The cover, the blurb, the MC's age, and a bunch of other factors led me to believe this book was YA. However, what I got was much closer to MG, a type of books I don't read too often and need to be in a specific mood for. Needless to say, I wasn't in that sort of specific mood and may have gotten annoyed because my YA expectations weren't meant. Perhaps that's why when I think about Briarheat, I think about the flaws first: the prevalence of telling over showing; the pacing issues that make it feel like the story doesn't even start until about 2/3 in and then gets crammed into too few pages; the secondary characters who often felt flat and far from fully realized.

At the same time, even with all that flaws at the front of my focus, this book has a certain charm. I loved the relationships in Miri's family; there's no "wicked stepfamily" trope here at all, and that's refreshing. Everything about Aurora's Companions, their training, camaraderie and adventures felt both naive and hopeful, like a wholesome fairytale for kids (and if this is indeed MG, it's probably how it should feel). The fairies were interesting, the unicorn was lovely, and the dragon was compelling. 

I don't regret reading it; I just wish there was more clarity about what age group it's written for. I swear I've seen it tagged as YA in at least three different places. 

The first thing I absolutely loved about this book was the prose. The words are beautiful, the imagery is vivid, and the atmosphere created by the writing is tangible. The next is the characterization; both Marie-Laure and Werner felt like real people to me, and the same goes for many other characters, such as Etienne or Jutta.

Where the book suffered a little for me was the story, or rather, the way it was constructed/presented. The combination of different timelines, different POVs, and very short chapters created a feeling that this wasn't a unified story, but rather simply a series of snapshots from different sides of the war, each of them wonderfully written, each of them painting a haunting picture of the way something so enormous and cruel and unfair affects a person. If the entire book was written that way, I would actually enjoy it for what it would be then. But there is a point where the author tries to pull all the storylines together and focus on the plot, and for me, the way that part turned out to be was, to be honest, unsatisfying. The depth of the character-focused scenes gave way to some very shallow plotting, with events that felt rushed and questions remaining unanswered.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book, inasmuch as I can honestly apply the word 'enjoy' to a war story. I loved big parts of it. It gave me a lot of feelings and a nightmare, and I've written down so many quotes to re-read later. But I just feel that if all those storylines continued to exist alongside each other without intersecting in any sort of "plotty" ways, the way they have been for most of the novel, the impact would be even stronger. 

This is the kind of story that possibly wouldn't impress me much based on plotting and worldbuilding alone, but oh, the characters absolutely make up for any possible flaws. I absolutely adored the entire cast, how fully realized each of the main ensamble members was, how the same thing goes for all the secondary characters, how diverse this group of wonderful, flawed people is and how human they feel. Yes, the plot was predictable at times, but the way each of the characters interacted with it and developed through it makes it a wonderful story. It's heavily centered on the subjects of family—blood family and found family alike, and in many ways it's a classic coming of age tale about learning to stand on your own while also finding people to lean on.

It was incredibly kind of the author to make this first book in the series free, and I'm can't wait for the next installment in this series! 

I've read two books by Katrina Leno before (Summer of Salt and Everything All at Once), and I thought they were beautiful. They both dealt with really tough subjects and made me tear up more than once, but they were also very life-affirming somehow. So when a friend lent me You Must Not Miss saying she thought I might like it, I expected to like it indeed, and I expected it to make me feel roughly the same way as the author's other books did.

I... was wrong, I guess.

I did like a lot about this book. I liked the characterization. I loved Leno's prose. I liked big parts of how the story was constructed, gradually revealing the truth about what had happened in Magpie's life. I didn't exactly like (because this isn't the sort of thing I can apply the word "like" to) but I was genuinely impressed by the visceral honesty of depicting the impact abuse and neglect have on people. I really felt for Magpie. I wanted some sort of victory for her. I wanted a chance for her to get better.

Instead, it felt like I only got to witness her defeat.

I also wasn't a fan of how the whole Near plotline was handled on the whole. In magical realism books like this, I expect to see a sort of ambiguity: "Is this real, or is this only happening in the character's head?" Here, this ambiguity was handled in a pretty weird way for me. On one hand, I felt like I was expected to immediately buy it that Near is completely, 100% real. On the other hand, for at least the first 2/3 of the book there was preciously little reason to actually think so, if I looked closely at the actual events. I don't know, it was like I expected a soft shadow play and got stark contrasts, and it only served to magnify that feeling I talked about in the paragraph under the spoiler above. 

Bottom line: I felt like this ended up being a story about the abusers winning, despite the successful revenge and the supposed empowerment the MC got, and I didn't like that. 

I wouldn't call this book particularly memorable, but it was definitely a lot of fun. I liked how mundane a lot of the story was despite having a vampire for a MC. The inclusion of the supernatural did play a part in this cozy mystery, but the focus was on the small town community with all of its private secrets, public smiles, charity events, and so much bickering. It was a fun community to follow, and I liked how the murder wasn't the only mystery for the MC to solve. The entire investigating was pretty exciting, with enough twists to keep things unpredictable yet plausible.

I'm kind of intrigue what gruesome-yet-cozy crimes will happen in this town next, and how Simon and Giles's relationship will develop, so may as well pick up the next book at some point.

One thing that annoyed me at times was the prose; it wasn't exactly unclear, but just... needlessly complicated? It's like the author tried so hard to make everyone but the MC sound British, except I'm not sure British = "using the longest possible words in place of shorter ones."

My first thought upon finishing this comic: "This was utterly ridiculous. I love it."

I mean, it's super ridiculous and whacky, but in the best way. In everything from artwork to plot, it reminded me of all those Nickelodeon cartoons I used to watch as a kid while pretending to do homework, except queer and in college. Plenty of cuteness, laugh-out-loud moments, and the general feeling that everything's going to work out fine even when there are zombies everywhere. A great feel-good read for the spooky season. 

I went in expecting entertaining rich people drama. What I got was rich people drama that just... failed to entertain. Or call up any emotional response whatsoever in me, really. Must be something about narration.