Salt Houses is one of my all-time favorite reads and somehow I struggled to really get into this one at all. I think it's partially the structure that makes the emotional arcs feel more broken for me? The family dynamic has just not felt as compelling and the pace feels too slow. Setting this aside for now.

I hit a brick wall on holiday reads - will return to this one next year!

Not in the right mood for this unfortunately. I'm told the narration is a game-changer, though, so I'm going to opt for that instead and see if my mood circles around to this.

Not the right mood - will return to this!

This is a bit too over-the-top for my current mood, and I'm struggling to feel any real connection to the characters because of it.

Non-consensual sex scenes between MCs in flashbacks were triggering, and I set this aside. See content warning for further context if this could potentially be triggering for you as well.

I wanted to read this as a final note in the Le Veq series (which I've LOVED) but the timelines and how they overlap with earlier books just doesn't make sense to me? And I'm missing my favorite FMC, Zahra, a bit too much, so knowing she won't have any family cameos in this made me lose some steam. Likely a great intro to Women Who Dare but a bit confusing as a continuation of the Le Veq brothers.

The moment we transitioned into the present day storyline I lost interest. I may return at some point? But have a lot of other current reads in excited about, so softly DNFing for now.

This is purely historical fiction with an unreliable first person narrator. I didn't dislike it, it just didn't have the elements of magical realism I had assumed it might based on her other books - that's on me for not knowing what this was! Historical fiction readers will likely enjoy this more.