Hannah
A fantasy with dark academia vibes featuring a cast of villains and at least one serial killer. I loved the dynamic between Victor and Eli and found their differing reactions to their powers (and the monsters within them) fascinating.
By the time the first bell rang... he'd turned his parents' lectures on how to start the day into: Be lost. Give up. give in. in the end it would be better to surrender before you begin. Be lost. be lost. And then you will not care if you are ever found.
It took me awhile to get hooked into this story. The writing is slow, lyrical, and purely vibes at the beginning. We're wandering endless halls full of oceans and statues with very little idea of what is going on. Once the plot is added into this visually stimulating setting, I was completely hooked and finished the book during one flight.
The world and characters are vivid with a dash of mystery. The culty subplot slowly leaked through journal entries was so well written. Clark is skillful at inspiring both horror and beauty and making you feel like your floating through all her worlds.
The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of itself. It is not a means to an end.
But I was here.
And I did things.
I discovered Amy Rosenthal through The Anthropocene Reviewed, where I learned three things about her: (1) she was friends with John Green, (2) she had died of cancer in 2017, (3) she wrote a book called An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. This book gives a vivid image of what it was like to live in her brain, both through the “pillow book” format and the beautiful writing that swings between lighthearted absurdity and raw emotion. This collection is humorous, perceptive, and full of little breadcrumbs of love for her friends and family.
This was so charming. Dora and Elias come together mainly because she's the only person besides his best friend Albert whom he can't drive away. Half of Dora's soul was stolen by a fae lord when she was a child and now it's rather hard to ruffle her feathers. This allows her to get past the shield of uncouthness Elias puts up for the gentry, and she sees the virtuous layers underneath. He similarly goes from a dispassionate fascination at her predicament to a genuine love for her kindness, compassion, and wit. Oh regency romance. Apart from wanting Dora to feel happiness, I actually like her the way she is with her 1/2 soul.
I've been fitting a little of John Green's writing into my brain every day for the past couple of months with this essay collection. It never failed to leave me inspired, laughing, and a little in awe at this planet and the silly humans who inhabit it. I ended my reading with a book covered in highlights and sticky tabs. Green will never fail to impress me with the beautiful way he strings words together.
To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June... We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.
I came for the mystery and stayed for the characters. This is about a group of 80-something-year-olds living in a retirement village who meet every Thursday to solve cold cases. Their club gets much more exciting when a man connected to the village is murdered.
This group of retirees is quirky and heartwarming. Their ring leader, Elizabeth, is a force of nature who always manages to stay one step ahead of the detectives using the connection of her past mysterious career (spy? international agent? who knows) all while dealing with the heart-wrenching and slow loss of her best friend and husband due to dementia.“Her arm is around her Stephen in the darkness. Can he feel it? Does Penny hear her? Have they both already disappeared? Or are they only real for as long as she chooses to believe they're real? Elizabeth clings on a little tighter and holds onto the day for as long as she is able.”While the rest of the cast initially claim to not be friends, we get to watch as those friendships secretly grow anyway and enjoy all the lovely interactions that emerge as a result.“‘Where is your place, Ron?' asks Ibraham. ‘Honestly? I'm flicking through it all in my head, all the things you're supposed to say. But, listen. It might just be here in this chair, with my mate, drinking his whisky, dark outside, with something to talk about.'“In the end, I didn't care much about the murders and the organization of the case could've been better. But you could've given me this group of retirees doing just about anything and I would've read it.
I'm not sure how I ended up reading a Christmas romance in February, but I'm glad I did! This is now one of my new favorite romances.
The angst level due to miscommunication is low and short-lived, so I could reread this without anxiety. The friendship between Luka and Stella is lovely and believable. The author doesn't just say “friends to lovers” and leave it at that. We get slow peeks into their decade of friendship and we understand Stella's fear of abandonment that has caused her to deny her love for Luka. I love love love their relationship and all the side characters and the small town this is set in.“And isn't it silly to love the way someone's things look like next to yours? Little bits and pieces of lives in parallel.”“I recognize the sadness in her words, the loneliness of remembering someone all by yourself.”“I like the sound of her settling against me.”
The concept of The Seven Year Slip is a strong sell - a woman grieving the loss of her aunt moves into her aunt's apartment and finds that this apartment sometimes sends you back 7 years in the past. There, Clementine meets Iwan, a man who stayed a summer at her aunt's house with dreams of making it as a chef.
The plot centers around her falling in love with the idealistic Iwan of the past while getting to know the more cynical and refined Iwan of the present. I had a hard time connecting to the romance between Clementine and young Iwan. The conversations felt like they skipped straight into the deep end without any getting-to-know-you phase, and I didn't find them believable. I felt much more connected to the more mature romance with present-day Iwan. That's not to say past Iwan wasn't likable, he had a lovely way with words.“Universal truths in butter. Secrets folded into the dough. Poetry in the spices. Romance in a chocolate. Love in a lemon pie.”The main point of this story which I deeply connected to was the concept of falling in love with multiple versions of your partner and accepting that people change. The person you loved seven years ago will be vastly different from the person you love today, even if they are the same person. No one ever goes back to being the old version of themselves, and you cannot force them to. Long-lasting love means choosing to fall in love over and over again with every new version. As someone who has been married for almost a decade now, that clicked with me.“That was love, wasn't it? It wasn't just a quick drop – it was falling, over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn't something you could plan for.”
The first time I tried to read It Happened One Summer, I DNF'd it a few pages in because I could not stand Piper or her family. She seemed to be a very stereotypical portrayal of a rich LA influencer, and I hated it. Then, I read a review that compared Piper to Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek. After going back in with that mindset, I grew to adore this romance. It was heartwarming with a beautiful setting and major found-family vibes. There was minimal internal conflict once the characters got together, and the conflict that did occur did not drag on for too long. And I got to watch Piper evolve into someone I actually liked. Once outside the influence of the rich and famous, her kindness shines through. She befriends everyone around her, welcomes her Grandmother into her life with open arms, and helps an older man up to his favorite perch every day. By the end of this book, she turns into a pretty cool person.
I picked this up at random without knowing much about it and ended up loving this story so much. The romance is funny and sweet and a bit over the top at times. The characters are flawed and lovable.The fact that they fell in love both in person and over margin notes made for book edits was a unique style that I was very into.“What would somebody think about a person like me? Who, out there the world, would think I was special enough to make the heroine in their story?”“...and anyway, romance isn't just about attraction. It's about companionship. You don't see old married couples who've been through two world wars and five babies together making out on a bench when they're ninety and think to yourself, now that's what it's all about. You see the way they hold hands, the way they serve each other scrambled eggs on plates they got for their wedding day, the way they shuffle through the paper in the mornings together without needing to fill the space with empty conversation. Because they are happy. Just happy. Together.”
We first meet Addie LaRue as a desperate young woman trying to avoid a life where she lives and dies in the same small village as the wife of a man she does not love who'd consign her to a fate of likely dying in childbirth. She makes a deal with the darkness to live freely until she's ready to stop. He takes this deal and makes it so that anyone who meets Addie will forget her. She exists - somehow thrives alongside suffering - this way for 300 years before meeting Henry, a man who remembers her.
Addie is my role model. Her will to survive, her ability to enjoy temporary moments of happiness, and her stoicism in the face of suffering show us a specific philosophy for how we can approach our lives. There are so many characters across so many books who've frustrated me with their reaction to hardship, but I never once stopped admiring Addie. I understood and respected her decisions, even the bad ones. I loved her reaction to good things. People who endure trauma often struggle to accept happiness and love into their lives for fear of risking more pain when it leaves. Addie frequently states, “She knew that it would end, it always ends eventually, but she would enjoy it while it was here.” She matches the gods with her determination and her vigor for life.
“But isn't it wonderful... to be an idea?”“And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain? And she turns her head and looks at him, and says ‘Always.'“
I was really happy to discover this author. She had a whole other career before writing and publishing her first novel at 50, calling these books her “Triumphant Second Act.” How inspiring is that?
This story is quirky and beautiful and is a must-read for when you need a reason to love and believe in humanity. There are strong found-family vibes between this group of commuters from different backgrounds and ages who find what they need in each other.The end of the book, with Bea and Iona dancing together, brought me to tears. It was both happy and oh-so bittersweet.“She'd been the proof that he'd made it, the icing on the cake of his new, impressive life. and now the icing had solidified in the life he was no longer sure he wanted.”“Sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy occurs. Bea said that I was like eggs and sugar and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake. And the problem is, when you're used to being a magnificent, mouthwatering cake, it's really hard to get used to being just eggs and sugar once more.”“I realized I'd mistaken control for love.”“There were, Iona had learned, some problems that you really couldn't solve. You just had to find a way to live with them. And if Bea could no longer join her in Iona's world, then she would join Bea in hers.”
This was a book where I had very little idea of what was happening for the first 75% and then loved the book after reaching the end and seeing how all the pieces come together. Even when you're not sure what's going on, the writing is so beautiful and visually stimulating that you're happy to stick around for the ride.
“I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn and every time love's written in all the strands it will be you.”“Hunger - Red - to sate a hunger or to stoke it, to feel hunger as a furnace, to trace it's edges like teeth - is this a thing you, singly, know? Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?”
I liked the time span of this story. Ari and Josh have a series of random run-ins over several years and - though they go from a strong dislike to friendship to love - it takes them much longer to grow into the right partner for the other. Ari has to face her fear of fully loving someone and grapple with what she wants from her life. Josh has to put aside his ego and build a life outside of his career failure without pinning it all on Ari. By the time they finally fall in love, you've seen so many different sides and phases of these two people.“Somewhere in that mass of people dressed in colorful outfits is a man wearing a dark hat and jacket, reading a sloppily dictated love declaration. It's either the beginning of a love story or the moment she'll be narrating to therapists for years to come.”
This book was so emotionally difficult for me to read yet so worth pushing through to reach the conclusion. There are so many scenes that will live in my head forever. It was a non-stop testosterone-packed rollercoaster that starts with Darrow being tortured and kept in a box by the Jackal for a year and spins into a series of battles and incredibly hard choices that show how there are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys when it comes to war. Each choice makes you question how to balance ideals with the cost of making those ideals a reality.“How many mothers have prayed to see their sons, their daughters return from war only to realize the war has kept them, the war has poisoned them, and they'll never be the same?” There was so much emotion because these characters are unbelievably real. Over three books, you love them and know them deeply. I had to stop reading for a week after Ragnar died. They are imperfect and morally grey and packed with breathless courage and reckless stupidity, selflessness and greed. Pierce captures the worst and best of humanity in every character. Forever a Howler <3Ragnar's Death“I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be besides my own...“Ragnar and Darrows' friendship was a symbol of hope and change. Ragnar himself became a good and inspiring man. This made his death extra heartbreaking, it felt like a loss of hope. But he died reunited with his sister. He died a free man and a hero to his people. He died with the message to his people that they could be more than war and violence. Roque's DeathI will never stop wishing that Roque could have been different. His death broke Darrow's heart because Darrow never let go of his friendship, even through torture and attempted murder. I struggled with this tendency at first, but I think it demonstrated Darrow's ability to see multiple viewpoints and his ability to love unconditionally.The Mob and The Hanging“My name is Sevo Au Barca, and I am a murderer. And what do we do to murderers?”For me, this is the most poignant scene of the book, I can't stop thinking about it. Darrow's uncle is murdered by the Jackal and it leads to a fracturing of the rebellion's forces as low colors begin killing golds on their own side of the war. Darrow and Sevro get there just as Cassius is to be executed by the mob. Sevro breaks to the front and claims Cassius as his property because Cassius murdered his father. He announces to the crowd that Cassius is a murderer, yelling “...and what do we do to murderers?” before dropping Cassius to hang as the mob cheers. Then he lists how many people he, their leader, has killed. The mob cheers again as he counts off how many golds and other colors he's killed. But they begin screaming when he repeats “...and what do we do to murderers?” before putting the rope around his own neck and jumping. WOW. The power of that repeated phrase and the way it broke through the mindlessness of mob mentality. I was so proud of Sevro in that moment.The Final StandThe way my heart stopped when I thought Sevro had been murdered by Cassius and they were defeated. This was such a powerful ending because it's often seen as a weakness that Darrow won't give up on his friends even when they betray him. When Cassius kills Sevro, you think that has caused his downfall. But then the twist - Cassius and Darrow reveal that they are working together and Sevro's alive. We see that Darrow's ability to keep loving his friends and show mercy is his strength in this rebellion.
If your heart beats like a drum and your legs a little wet, it's because the Reapers come to collect a little debt
Series review –
I stayed up two nights in a row until 3 am to finish the first two books in this series, there were so many fun twists and I could not stop reading!
The Truly Devious series splits between the present day and the 1930s at Ellingham Academy, a famous private school in Vermont founded by Albert Ellingham as “a place where learning is a game.” The year that the school opened, the founder's wife and daughter were kidnapped. Though Albert gave everything the kidnappers asked for, they're never found. A few years later, Albert goes sailing with his FBI friend George Marsh and their boat blows up.In the present day, Stevie Bell is accepted to Ellingham Academy with the ambition of solving the case. While the cold case is her original interest, she soon becomes embroiled in an active murder as death visits Ellingham Academy once more.The Ellingham case is solved by book 3. The next two books are irrelevant to the series and simply served to strengthen my wish that Nate could've been the love interest instead of David, though I love Nate and Stevie's friendship regardless. I would do rereads of this with just books 1-3.
I read this book in one sitting and it was everything I was looking for after finishing the Truly Devious series.
Pippa is what I was missing with Stevie from Truly Devious. She's consumed with solving a murder from five years ago, but she also does her homework and keeps her life mostly together. Yes, it's weird that I care so much about this element of my ya characters, but I got so stressed out by Stevie's absolute disregard for the elements of her life that weren't murder and it distracted me from the plot of Truly Devious.Moving past the Pippa v Stevie comparison, Pippa and Ravi were such a lovely pair and the twists of solving Andie Bell's murder and clearing Sal Singh's name were exciting and consuming. One of my top reads of 2023.
This is like Mindhunter for young adults. Two college kids are recruited to interview Juvenile serial killers based on the experience of their personal trauma. Emma is the sole survivor of a serial killer and Travis is a US Marshall candidate whose father was killed by a young serial killer, Simon.The premise is a bit shaky and I struggled with the overconfidence of teenage plans, but that's what I get for reading this as an almost 30-year-old. All in all, I ate this book series up and had a fun time reading it.
This book was such an interesting combination where the first half of the book is a non-magic but compelling story of a boy, Charlie, helping an old man and his dog while recovering from his father's bout of alcoholism and the death of his mother. The second half of the book feels like a whole new story, with a fantasy world, a kingdom ruled by an evil king, a damsel-in-distress princess, and Charlie transforming into a prince out of a fairy tale. I enjoyed both halves, but the first half with no fantasy elements was my favorite and established all my emotional attachment to the characters. The world that Charlie came from felt so deep and real with fleshed-out characters while many of the supporting characters in the fairytale world felt a bit too cutesy.
I think all worlds are magic. We just get used to it.
The world and background were well done for a YA novel, and the plot and characters were just my type. It was fun to feel the same way about the Shepard King that our heroine Elspeth feels - this weird mix of affection and hate, connection and resentment. I have a soft spot for morally grey characters, and he is that. Elspeth is one of my most liked heroines in recent reads. I thought she had a strong mind to coexist with a 500-year-old nightmare king who thought himself a monster and was ravenous for revenge.
Be wary, be clever, be good
I couldn't stop grinning through this whole book, regardless of how it made me look at the bus stop. Emily Henry is a genius at witty dialogue. And Gus... I love Gus. He's like a modern Mr. Darcy with his vibe of “I'm completely in love with you. I will demonstrate this by standing nearby and insulting you”.
This book was an apocalyptic hug. Favorite read of 2023. I love everything about it. Ryland Grace is a joy to tag along with, even as he's facing certain death in a separate solar system from Earth. His inner dialogue is so entertaining. Rock stole my heart even though I'm terrified of spiders.It was so heartwarming to watch these two work together across culture and language to communicate and solve the mystery of astrophages to solve both of their planets. The solid and steady growth of their friendship was lovely and the world-building was so well done. I appreciated how flashbacks were introduced as a form of Grace slowly getting his memory back, so it didn't feel forced in the overall plot.
Grumpy. Angry. Stupid. How long since last sleep, question?
This series is so, so good. It is an emotional rollercoaster that is at times hard to read because the characters' pain is your pain. You grow to care so much about these well-fleshed-out characters, and the author does an amazing job at making both the reds and golds and all the colors between complex. There is no clear good and evil. The reds are not wholly good and the golds are not wholly bad. I love how he shows this yet still makes you understand that the societal structure that stands on the backs of the suffering lower castes must be destroyed. He shows the struggle in a rebellion - the balance that must be struck between tearing down and rebuilding and how easily the good side may become bad if they don't hold onto the future they're fighting for.The audiobooks for this series are a masterpiece.Darrow is a Red and a HellDiver. He lives in the deep mines of Mars, loving his wife Eo and taking pride in his work even as his people starve and his death threatens to arrive every day via a pit viper or a lost limb. Then, Eo shows him a secret section of the mine they were never supposed to see - a garden. He's never seen the sky, never felt grass beneath his feet. Eo tries to convince him to rebel, but he won't risk dying like his father did. He has Eo to live for. That's before they're caught exiting the garden. Eo is whipped and then executed when she sings a forbidden song that still lives in my head to this day.
My love, my love
remember the cries
When winter died for spring skies
They roared and roared
But we grabbed our seed
And sowed a song
Against their greed
And
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing
the reaper swing
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper sing
A tale of winter done
My son, my son
Remember the chains
when gold ruled with iron reins
we roared and roared
and twisted and screamed
For ours, a vale
of better dreams
Darrow is saved by the Sons of Aires. They ask him to sacrifice everything to save his people by undergoing the carving to become a Gold and infiltrate the institute.