Alicia
I'm going to give my brain some time to digest this and then attempt to describe my feelings toward it. All I can say for now is that this is the ultimate story of stories, for lovers of stories and magic, and literally everyone should read it.
[Read this book while delirious from Covid, which was perfect.]
This book was so chaotic and savage. I loved it, obviously.
But it's not just a takedown of the confused white people trying to publish “diverse” books; it's about the whole damn machine.
It's like you want to root for someone but you keep searching and searching and find that no, no one is likeable, actually. And by no one I'm also including The Publishing Industry. I'm still thinking about this and what it all means.
Cozy and warm, very October, very pumpkin spice. Kind of felt like Sabrina (The Teenage Witch) and her aunts solving crime in their town. Excited for the next one.
“It's not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie.”
Lore
Thank you Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for the ARC!
Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemi Taboada, a young socialite in 1950s Mexico City who is called out to the countryside to check on her cousin after a disturbing, strange letter. This marvelous, slow burn of a book steadily builds the pressure and tension as the reader follows Noemi's growing sense of disorientation and horror. I loved the haunted manor, creepy family, and local legends that all play together in such a way that you (and the main character) slowly realize nothing is at seems. I could NOT put this down until the last page!
This warm cinnamon roll of a book is so cute and perfect I never wanted it to end. Like a John Hughes movie but better! It's full of heart and laughs and cranberry muffins and the absolute awkwardness of being in high school and trying to find your place in it all. LOVED this!
So.....I basically finished this in one sitting. I mean. I. MEAN. We have tortured Bastien and his cheekbones, Mademoiselle Celine Rousseau who's sick of everyone's shit, a cadre of also tortured, also sexy, steamy, vampires and their (probably amazing but not specifically mentioned) cheekbones. I MEAN! The plot was so fast paced and the world-building so exquisite I just couldn't put it down for one second. I also enjoyed the introduction and exploration of more creatures and a maybe evil? Lady Galadriel the Mysterious whose intentions and powers are unknown but super intriguing. This felt like the set up to even more sexysteamy vampiric adventures and some epic machinations/supernatural wars. I can't WAIT to see what happens next!
This book is intense, brutal, bloody, and haunting. Nature and history meld and time overlaps as the past catches up to these characters in the worst, most literal way. Jones writes with such velocity and movement that you just get swept away in the story, kind of like the unstoppable, building cycle of violence these characters have tumbled into. And yet, somehow, Jones threads just enough hope in there, too. Quite a work.
I don't think I have ever read a series conclusion book as mighty as this one. It does what all good series enders should do which is not just wrap up all the story lines and plot points, but cap off a story that has gotten better and better in each telling and which does each and every character the justice they deserve. I cried, I laughed, I glared, and sometimes read the same sentence over and over and over because it was that good and I didn't want to forget. If you're finishing the series, or debating whether to start it, all I can say is that it is definitely a journey, it will change you, as any good story does, and it is utterly worth it. Thank you, Sabaa, for these incredible characters and this incredible story.
Briana has been through a lot. After suffering a tragic personal loss she starts early college at her dream school, UNC. She quickly discovers, though, everything is not as it seems. In a true remixing of the King Arthur legend, Briana is thrown into a fascinating world of demons, magic, first romance, and friendship. From Bree's first encounter with the supernatural, to her discovery of the true power that lives within her, I was hooked! I literally read the last pages of the book standing up, I was so excited!
This story is SO unique and Tracy Deonn situates it firmly in the contemporary American South.
Bree deals with everything from fighting demons to secret societies and systemic racism. I love that Deonn did not shy away from these realities and the book was stronger for it. If you love stories about magic, strong, complex characters, and/or secret societies, you will LOVE this. HIGHLY recommend! 1000 stars!
This book was such an enchanting breath of fresh air! I loved the simple, charming, utterly delightful fairy tale magic of this book. I loved the journeys of the characters and the ending and couldn't help the smile on my face reading this. I mean, there's an enchanted wood, a gardener's daughter with strange magic, a mysterious fox, a lost prince, a magical bear... What else do you need? Absolute treasure!
Thank you to NetGalley and Balzer + Bray for the review copy!
“When the forest is hungry, feed it.”
This book is a badass, Puritan-adjacent, feminist horror romance story. I absolutely devoured it over a few nights in October and I think it may be one of my favorite books of the year. This book was EVERYTHING I needed this year and I can't wait to reread it. Thank you, Alexis Henderson!
From being inspired to move to Paris by Flaubert's Parrot, to starting a book blog after reading How To Be A Woman, this gentle, cozy book reaffirmed for me the unique magic of a reader's life. Told as a kind of bookish memoir with topical recommendations at the end of each chapter, I ate this up rather quickly and was left with a desire to 1) read all the books!, 2) move to Cornwall, and 3) open up a bookshop. My one caveat is that the author's reading recommendations skewed pretty Anglo- and European-centric. Overall, it was an enjoyable book about books.
Combining the tales of Rappaccini's Daughter, Rapunzel, and (the author says) Sleeping Beauty, with Persian folklore and royal history, this book is about a girl with a curse trying to figure out what it all means and how to save her kingdom. I found it to be an entertaining YA fantasy, heavy on the fairy tale aspect, and so perfect for fans of all the above!
“Sometimes it feels like we're all going through life in a country song—different lyrics, maybe, but humming the same melody, and nobody's listening closely enough to notice.”
One of the Good Ones
This book was an absolute masterpiece. The hype is real. O'Farrell's prose is so exact, fluid, and beautiful that I felt like I was buoyed along in the life of a 16th century family that could also be the life of any family today. Shakespeare, a near mythical being, is so desperately human here, his name never once being mentioned but hovering over everything. And the character of Agnes is so powerful and stunningly wrought that the two are equal pillars of this story. I don't know what else to say except read it!
“I felt like an explorer at the precipice of some new, wild world, armed only with ink and hope.”
As a child I was always looking for doors. Doors in closets, doors in forests, magic doors that would take me to Narnia, to Wonderland, to Hogwarts... This book is for all those wanderers and searchers like me. This is the story of a girl named January. A girl who doesn't fit in to her starched-white New England world, who is also always looking for the magic she's told again and again is not real, or at least not for her. It's also the tragic story of her father and her mother. Of the family she makes, the boy she loves, her best-friend dog, and the journey she goes on. To say more would be to spoil it utterly.
Reading this book was like sitting in front of a warm fire. I cried, I laughed, and I cried again. This is probably one of, if not the, best books I have read all year. Do yourself a favor and open it for yourself.
As with the previous book in this serious, Tilly and her friend, Oskar, make a great duo to follow in their adventures (literally) through the book world and, as in this case, the wild world of fairy tales. The magic and world system is fascinating and definitely cozy with a heavy emphasis on Anglo-centric, Western classic children's literature and fairy tales. Overall, I found it a lighthearted, fun read, perfect for a cozy winter afternoon in.
“What is it?” She asked.“I knew you talked to books. I didn't realize they listened.”“They do more than just listen.”
If you've ever dreamed of a book starring Hermione Granger, swords, and the Hogwarts Library, this is the book for you. Elisabeth Scrivener has grown up inside one of the Great Libraries of Austermeer, battling booklice (yes, this is a thing!), grumpy teachers, the misguided expectations of everyone around her, and the mysterious magic of the grimoires they guard. There is also a broody sorcerer, Nathaniel Thorn, who she's not sure if she can trust, and his mysterious butler, Silas. And, of course, the forces of evil and darkness she has to somehow figure out how to stop.
This book was so fun, so magical, and so heartwarming it was like drinking a strong cup of tea while listening to tales of adventure and romance from an old friend. My only sadness is that I can't read it again for the first time!
DNF @ 32%
I wanted so badly to like this book and for the first 70 or so pages I did. After the story takes a turn and enters a different timeline, I became completely lost. I don't mind complex stories or many characters but at one point I literally had no idea what was going on and I felt like I was just swimming in words with no meaning.
I think someone who likes Finnegan's Wake or maybe something really strange and, perhaps, Kafka-esque might enjoy this. Unfortunately, I just could not continue. In the end, it just wasn't for me.
What. A. Book. I wasn't sure I would even read this because I had such a hard time connecting with the first in the series but blood and bone did I love this one. We pick up with our cast of characters after the devastating events at the end of the first book. The connection I had been looking for with Nadya, Serefin, and Malachiasz in the first book that had felt weak, immediately sucked me in and I was fully invested in their journey. This book had everything I had been looking for in the series. There's wild, dark magic, battles with ancient gods and goddesses, torturous romance, and high, high stakes, that kept me hooked the whole way through. This book will break your heart, put it back together, and break it all over again--in the best way possible! Not for the faint of heart.
In which Sleeping Beauty and Snow White kiss themselves awake, Tinkerbell goes to anger management, Ariel is the Siren Queen, and Wendy wrote the story of Neverland.
I wanted so badly to LOVE this book. This is a debut novel with a mystical bent about the founding of Liberia, something I, admittedly and unfortunately, know little about. The three main characters whose journeys we follow throughout the book are compelling. Gbessa, an indigenous woman who can't die; Norman Aragon, a biracial man who can disappear; and June Dey, a boy of questionable origin born on a plantation in America who is, basically, Superman. Each one had an emotional, riveting back story which were powerful on their own. I was probably most intrigued by Gbessa, being that her narrative felt like the one the author lingered on the longest.
There was some truly beautiful writing in here and some really great ideas and concepts. However, many times I lost the thread of connection with the characters and just when I was beginning to feel empathy for them, the story moved on. The chapters themselves were also relatively short with several breaks in between. Personally, this broke up my connection with the characters' stories and whisked me along faster than I would have liked. Because of the weird pacing, I found it hard to connect to the books and the story and found myself wanting to put it down when I was over halfway through.
For me, the most impactful part of the story was the ending which was brief and which seemed to have come out of nowhere. I also had no idea how any of the characters ended up where they did at the end and could not connect the dots.
Overall, this is a good first book and I would definitely read the author again. I was disappointed by the lack of cohesion and by the lack of connection I felt with the characters. These stories do need to be told, however, and I would love to see her delve back into this type of tale.