Daijah

read for the literally dead book club: april 2023read for magical readathon 2023 [moon warden]: art of illusion (match clothes color to cover)

this was just really fun and campy. i had such a great time and i loved roza's unhinged nature and the twists this book took 

read for my patreon book club: april 2023read for magical readathon 2023 [moon warden]: astronomy (two letter e's in title)

this had such a despicable villian which i loved. i enjoyed sam a lot and her bestie boo. matt can eat ass for all i care. jennifer is amazing at characterization and that end twist?! quaking 

loved this collection! the average of the stories together was a 4.5 but there were some standouts and some that weren't my fav from eric but eric knows how to do a collection. 

i really loved the discussion had in this book. this book really discussed the nuance of so many issues relating to race and sexual assault and the intersection of those. i love a legal thriller personally. while it doesn't have as much legal aspects, the vibes and some of the discussions really remind me of allegedly by tiffany d. jackson which is one of my favsssssss

not a fan of traditional lockroomed mysteries but i had so much fun with this one. it got me out of a 2-3 week reading slump and the END TWIST?!?! phenomenal. loved. 

i rated each chapter individually which comes out to about a 4.5 but i think every chapter was necessary to tell the whole story. this was truly heartbreaking and i loved the creativity shown through each chapter. junji ito has one of the best imaginations 

one good plot twist. boring for the rest of the book. entirely too long. 

i'm so disappointed i didn't love this one because i love suffer the children by craig dilouie and it was one of my most anticipated of the year. this was super slow and long for no reason. you would think it would be slow to gradually build tension to the explosive ending but there was no tension just boredom. i loved the format of this book and how it translated to an audiobook. the audiobook is over the top but i enjoyed it. the ending is what saved this for me tho. it was a phenomenal ending and giving along the lines of as above so below but everything else was boring asl.

 this was super cute but a little overhyped to me. i enjoyed it for sure but it wasn't the most memorable. i plan on continuing and hopefully, it gets a bit better for me!

read for patreon book club march 2023

love the vibes and writing in this. it had so many things i love in horror and this went into a good for her revenge story which i didn't expect. this really played on the grayness of religion, actions, and morality. 

 i loved the exploration of sibling relationships and grief. the grief and sudden death of both parents was the true horror for me because that's a great fear for me. grady hendrix always has this humor and horror balance i love and also some really disgusting scenes but i'm not a huge paranormal horror fan. especially not haunted dolls so the actual horror element of this for me fell super flat. i get it and i'm sure plenty of people will enjoy it and while grady has a humourous tone in almost all his books, the haunted doll was giving juvenile and not in a good way i enjoyed.

i loved everything about this 

things have gotten worse was a reread for me and it is one of my absolute favorite books/stories of all time. the other two stories were new for me and the first one was also a 5 star but the second was more like a 3/3.5 star but because things have gotten worse is a 100/10 for me i'm giving the collection a 4.5

everything eric writes i adore. eric and i just click like that what can i say 

stacks of strange Q1 2023 book club pick

this is somewhere between a 3 to 3.5 for me. i loved the beginning and the tension that was created and the beginning premise. i also like the twist that caused it to go more into horror territory but it just felt a bit disjointed at the end and the pacing was fine until about 60% in and then went down the toliet 

this was fun! enjoyed it more than the first volume but not my fav 

i really enjoyed this! i enjoyed the world even though i thought it could be fleshed out more but this is just one of multiple books in this world. i loved the characters and their relationship. the end was amazing. it was slightly too instalovey for me but besides that, this was super enjoyable 

i love what this book had to say and how it was told. it really expressed something that most don't understand. this book has some truly sick moments 

this book was so short but took forever to read. the horror in this just wasn't my favorite and there was a part of this that pulled at my heartstrings but it felt like nothing happened even tho it did. the bitterly cold atmosphere was really the only part of this book that was fleshed out 

this is not one of the best-written books ever but this got me out of a reading slump and was so much fun. i loved the twists and turns and my jaw kept dropping. i cannot wait to pick up more books by this author

actual rating: 5/5

read for the black romanticathon 2023: new to you author, black love, feel good read;read for the x's and o's readathon (team o) 2023: a book with friends to lovers;read for blackathon 2023: a book that is kinky, smutty, and sex positive

this quickly has shot up to the top of my romance list! mimi grace just has amazing writing and creates such intense chemistry between her characters. i truly ate this book up and i will now be reading everything mimi grace has ever written

when i tell you i ate this book up and i absolutely loved it but i didn't feel a ton of chemistry between the main couple. besides that literally this book is perfect to me 

this quickly has shot up to the top of my romance list! mimi grace just has amazing writing and creates such intense chemistry between her characters. i truly ate this book up and i will now be reading everything mimi grace has ever written

this one was super fun and has been one of the only books to deliver on the vibes it promised. it definitely was giving stranger things vibes and this is coming from an absolute stranger things lover. i honestly think that was the strongest point of the whole story as well as diving into the history of the bronx. it talked about the bronx history and the racism that is embedded into that history

the alternate universe we dive into that is similar to the upside down in stranger things, was accessed through a game similar to like bloody mary or another paranormal game which i think could have been a really cool horror element but combining that with this upside down type atmosphere just felt disjointed for me personally. i think both were cool but there was such exact rules to get into a very vague world.

the characters were okay but not my favorite. i did enjoy them and their relationships but they really could have been developed and fleshed out more. i wasn't attached or obsessed because there wasn't much background to any of the relationships or characters outside of the main character.

the horror was alright but i did not like some of the “characters” we have as villians in the alternate universe. it felt a bit like corny and cheesy and the real like “big bad” wasn't really built up enough for me. i was more scared of the creatures chasing the characters than the big bad the whole book. it's like being more overall scared of the demobats in stranger things than vecna. there was no impending sense of doom that is had over me.

i would still recommend this book and i had a good time but i think it could have been more fleshed out, more polished, and combined elements in a more flawless way.

thank you to sourcebooks, vincent tirado, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

i'm so sad and yet so happy 

this was way more emotional than i anticipated going in. this is a ya coming of age story but our main character was convinced via rape and has an estranged relationship with her mother because of this. she is trying to apply for colleges and feels like she cannot get a grasp on what to write because of this relationship.

this relationship with her mother is a huge portion of the book and her grappling with the fact of how she was brought into this world. she is also in a support group with other teens going through this and we see how this affects them in different ways which i really enjoyed.

derek and michie are absolutely adorable and i loved their relationship so much. i do wish we got more about derek and his struggles. we focused a little bit on his family but michie goes through so much and i wish that derek had at least one thing. it seemed a bit unrealistic that his life was so peachy keen. derek was such a sweet, wholesome, supportive bean tho

i loved seeing michie's relationship with her grandma as well. a lot of the black community is raised by grandparents and other relatives so i loved seeing the representation even tho personally i have never had relationships with any of my grandparents.

i think this discussed something i have never even thought about personally in such an amazing way and we really saw how it impacted michie. while it may have been too much for a ya audience i think it could have done more to talk about rape culture and how rape impacts more people than just the children conceived from it. it talked about the mothers slightly but i think if it dove into that more it could have been an absolute favorite.

overall i would highly recommend this for the audience that it is aimed at.

thank you to lane clarke, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.