wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

The HMRC is in a bit of a shambles - the previous High Pristess is dead, and the one that's about to take her place is not who people think she. Other than that, young Theo is struggling with her failing powers, Leonie travels to rescue her brother from one of the worst villains the world has known and Elle deals with marital issues in possibly the worst way imaginable.

It's official that the HMRC trilogy is now probably one of my favourites of all time - the two books I've read have just been soooo good and given me everything I wanted, and missed, for a novel about magic and witches but aimed at adults who have been through stuff, just like the readers. I just love and admire how Juno Dawson has brought this world to life - it genuinely feels so real, and the world-building is just so, so good as is the magic - the dark, the good, and the limitations of it.

I'm always so impressed how Juno Dawson brings real world issues into her books and explores them through character actions and how these movements affect and hurt people. In the first book, we saw a main character, Helena, become a full-blown TERF and how it hurt her relationship with her best friends and ultimately brought about her demise, mostly by her own hand. There isn't as much blatant transphobia in this book from characters which is a relief though we see trans-character Theo still struggling with her transition and what it means for her in a very realistic way. In this book, we see the topic of women-hating men in the form of the Hard Working Men witchfinders group (a couple of twists/reveals about this one that had me shocked!!). This group is very much what you would expect from the type of women-hating incel groups you'd find on 4chan and the dark web in how they rile each other up about how awful women/witches are and how they've been hard done by by them. The way Juno Dawson explores this subject (and rising issue in today's modern society) through witchcraft is just genius.

The characters are a bit more scattered in this one so although we will always have our main Spice Girls, they are a little on their own adventures here. Leonie and Ciara as well as Theo and a bit of Luke are the main POVs in this story with Elle taking a little bit more of a backseat apart from a couple of crazy moments. I loved Leonie's journey to different covens - especially her discovery of a sacred coven/safe place.

Our main POV in this book is the most interesting one as it's darker and more twisted than the ones we have had before (even Helena's) and it's a story we have heard a bit about in the previous book but now we're getting, and feeling it, through the actual source and it's different from what I would have imagined it to be. I thought I would hate this character as we've been told how evil they were but after this book, I don't think this at all and I'm just so excited for book 3 when we will have all the Spice Girls back together, even Geri, to kick some Lucifer butt.

Also, screaming, crying, throwing up at the last scene. 

Lana is on a mission which involves getting revenge on a group of men who hurt her one by one. And she really enjoys doing it. Things get complicated when Lana meets Logan, an FBI profiler who happens to be the lead detective on the murder cases left behind by Lana. Can the two form a real relationship despite one being a killer, and the other the person who catches one?

This was a surprisingly good read for me. I think part of why I enjoyed this so much was the FBI profiling/crime investigation part of the story in Logan's POV as it gave me Criminal Minds vibes. You do have to set your belief aside a little bit when it comes to the amount of abusing privilege in the Quantico offices as the team uses their database to look up the background of Lana and other people getting romantically involved with others. It's a bit creepy to be honest, and I like to think this doesn't happen in real life :/

I actually enjoyed Logan's POV more than Lana's - I think because it felt a bit more realistic and we also see a more 'normal' Lana in his chapters. The sex scenes are grand, not too much, not too little and there's not an overload of them either so they don't take away from the overall theme of the story which is killer/hunter.

There were some parts of Lana's story that are over the top but fun for the sake of the story though I could do without references to her 'murder room' and 'murder box' - like really you are just going to say these things out loud instead of giving them code names for when in public, cool cool. But the idea of a female vigilante in the way Lana is, is just kind of fun to read despite the violence and gore (and against, pausing my disbelief that men with guns would run away from a small girl with a knife no matter how well she wields it).

As predicted, this story ends on a really big cliffhanger but one that makes me want to read the next book asap. 

Cora and Dean don't really like each other - which is a problem as he's about to marry her sister. But one night things go terribly awry when the two of them are kidnapped by a crazed serial killer and forced into unimaginable situations. If they managed to escape, life will never be the same again, and neither will they.

I mean....just no.

I've heard lots of great things about the book and the story premise definitely intrigued me as I was very interested to see how the author dealt with such dark and horrifying topics in her books but managed to make people root for the central love story at the same time.

This book is fine, I just don't think it's for me - and I think this mostly just came down to how the characters were written and how they all acted towards one another. There were certain descriptions of characters too that were clearly there to make readers dislike them - Earl was described as obese on a number of occasions, and this was suppose to make him appear more disgusting (other than the fact he was a rapist and a killer). I also genuinely felt like he seemed too stupid to get away with what he was doing for so long. His 'catches' didn't seem particularly thought out and I found it hard to believe that someone like him would get away with everything for so long.

Mandy, Cora's sister, is basically in the story to show how Cora 'isn't like other girls' if all the heavy descriptions of Mandy's perfect hair, red life and false lashes and nails were anything to go by. And god forbid she wear high heels to a family gathering in her parents, scandalous. I hate when authors do this - focus on a character's beauty regime to define them. Wear too much make-up and you're a slut but wear none and you make no effort - babes, this is called letting the patriarchy win and let's not do that.

The 'hate' between Dean and Cora was never believable as it's just sooo obvious they want to bone each other, and honestly if I had a friend or a sibling who acted in that way towards my long-term partner (and vice versa), I'd be asking serious questions and would not be comfortable around them at all. And also OF COURSE Dean actually saw Cora first all those years ago in school and wanted her before Mandy.

I would like to know how much research the author did into the trauma of sexual assault victims, and people who have gone through something traumatic and live with PTSD for this book, because I'm honestly not sure if it was a lot. It felt odd to me straight away that both Cora and Dean immediately went back to living alone following their ordeal - and while yes, we see Dean turn to alcohol and Cora to unconscious self-mutilation to manage anxiety - there were just many things that didn't stack up for me and therefore the book didn't feel realistic.

Not to mention how friends and family act - the parents were fine, just a little bit useless and absent to be honest but everything about Mandy's reactions to everything was awful. Let me count the ways - pressuring Dean to start being intimate again after only 6 weeks following the kidnap (and sure, they were only captured for 3 weeks during which her sister was raped on a daily occasion and Dean forced to watch and more but no big deal), and then pretty much not supporting her sister at all and when finding out the two have formed a bond and emotions (which honestly is not surprising), her acting out, talking about betrayal and being selfish is just beyond okay. She never seemed to actually care what had happened to her sister, and the type of assault she had suffered. Mandy obviously had the right to feel hurt but I just don't think someone who truly loves their sister would react in this way after everything.

This book has a lot of sexual content from the disturbing (at the start) to more steamy scenes involving emotions and chemistry (middle, end). However, I think because the scenes are the start were just so gross and hard to read, I could never believe in the sex they chose to have during the rest of the book. I couldn't figure out why the two of them wouldn't have had a mental block when it came to physical intimacy - particularly towards each other - following their ordeal.

I'm happy for anyone who enjoyed this book but not for me. 

Wendy Michaels is 21-years-old and beautiful which is why she makes a tantalising prize for James 'Hook' Barrie when he spots her in his club, and realises she's the perfect way to get revenge on his arch nemesis, crooked businessman Peter Michaels. But hurting Peter may also mean hurting Wendy and as James gets to know her better, that becomes harder to do.

This is a dark romance book so it has scenes that graphic in both violence, and sexual content, as well as allusions to child abuse. I do like the concept of this story and a villain/heroine storyline of Hook and Wendy was too much for me to resist as someone who is a huge fan of Peter Pan, and also enjoys seeing spin-offs and 'fan fiction' connected to the original story.

This isn't a badly written book and I think there were parts of it that were done well - I just found, for me, everything about the book was trying too hard. The sexual scenes and the violent scenes felt a bit gratuitous at times that felt forced for me, and I've read many an explicit and violent book before so this content doesn't bother me (and if it did, I wouldn't read this book) but everything about it felt like the book was screaming 'look at me, I'm so big and bold and sexy and violent.'

I liked the character of Hook but again, he felt a bit one-note at times, and some of the way he postured and responded to Wendy made me want to laugh as I just felt he was overdone. The whole story made me feel like I was reading fan fiction like back in the old days of Mibba but this isn't necessarily a bad thing either. I enjoyed those stories, I just can't take them seriously and this was the case with this book.

Wendy was pretty much a wet blanket, Mary-Sue kind of character with the only kink in her wires (literally) being that she liked to be choked. But the virginal, wide-eyed girl who had no idea her daddy was a criminal while living in her big mansion was eye-rolling at times. I actually think parts of this story would have been better if Peter was Wendy's brother rather her dad.

The whole storyline of Peter Pan and Hook felt slightly anti-climatic at times too. We didn't get a lot of scenes of Peter at all and we were very much just told about him rather than shown. I also don't know why the Tinkerbell character could have just been called Tink instead of Tina Belle which made me gag. 

This book takes place in 1813, Dublin, and we follow Abigail Lawless, a very bright young woman who is fascinated by all things science and worldly, encouraged by her father who is a city coroner in North Dublin. When a maid from a young family nearby kills her newborn baby and herself, Abigail is attracted to the mystery of what would make the young woman commit such a crime and she is drawn into the darker world of religious group 'The Brethren' with every step uncovered in the potential crime bringing Abigail further into danger.

This book was an interesting and engaging read on audiobook, and I enjoyed hearing a story set in the 1800s in Dublin as I don't think I've read enough books during this particular time period. We are following a group of upper middle class people with Abigail a lady of leisure, finished her schooling and available for luncheons, dances and all sorts (but prefers to be studying or writing scientific articles). I'm always happy to read a character like Abigail who is very much a blue-stocking and ahead of her times in the way she thinks and acts - she was extremely clever but also empathetic to her friends and acquaintances, yet at the same time she was still a young woman who liked to go to a dance, and look well in her dress - and be disappointed when a young man didn't dance with her.

I think the initial story/plot became lost a little bit near the middle as we delved more into Abigail's world of science and professors, as well as dances and dinners, and while I didn't mind the author straddling two genres (crime/mystery and straight historical fiction), I think there could have been a firmer grip on the two to mesh it together better. Abigail did get a little annoying at some parts when she consistently walked straight into danger without thinking about it (following Devlin straight into the house for example). I also could have done without a pretty upsetting death of a horse in the last part of the book (dragged by a carriage off a cliff to a miserable, slow death).

This book is well written and researched though - and it was fun with some scenes taking place in areas I'm in all the time and I love imagining what it must have been like back then when the houses in Fitzwillam Square were homes and not offices. I think this would be a great first book in a series following Abigail and her father's assistant Ewan investigating suspicious deaths, and it would be a shame if the author didn't take the opportunity to continue. 

A Tall History of Sugar is a story about two people, twin souls Moshe and Ariana who were born a year apart but from the moment they met, were connected by something that could only be described as beyond human learning. As they grow older, Moshe's differences within his community, the way he looks and communicates with the world as well as the mystery behind his biological parents pull him away from Ariana and his adoptive parents, and his homeland of Jamaica as questions about everything from who he is, his sexuality and what he needs to do in life to find peace plague him.

This book was very lyrical and I found parts of it enjoyable - I actually didn't mind the Jamaican patois in this book, and didn't find it too hard to understand. This may be because I recently read Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks which also had similar patois in it so my mind was slightly attuned to reading and translating it.

I do love the setting of Jamaica, and I appreciated learning more about the history of the people from the history of sugar plantations, and how integral sugar is to everyone who lives in Jamaica as well as the history and shadow of colonisation. Moshe and Ariana's childhood was simple and idyllic in many ways but we also see how Moshe's family struggles as well and while he didn't need much, there wasn't a whole lot to give him anyway despite his parents' love and struggles to provide for him.

I think the book lost me a bit by the time Moshe left Jamaica, and his rift with Ariana started. It felt like the plot was confused and I didn't know if the story was centered around Moshe and who he came from (which we never found out anyway), or more about the deep relationship between Moshe and Ariana which although is love, I question if it's the type of love either of them needed.

There was a lot of back and forth in the latter half of the book in terms of timeline as well, and there were times when I couldn't figure out where in the timeline we were and it took a couple of pages to catch up.

I just don't think I understood the deep message of this book, and that's okay too as I think I maybe wasn't meant to. This is by no means a badly written book and I'd happily read more from the author - it's just one that didn't do it for me.