effy's reviews
1396 reviews

 

I definitely didn’t expect, based on the blurb, to get the story that I did with this book but I had a really good time with it. 

Based upon the blurb, I think I expected maybe a cult-y story but the majority of the plot revolves around Jenna’s right to choose whether she wants children and people attempting to manipulate that choice away from her. I thought the very real horrors of the world worked well alongside the folk horror elements and I found it very easy to suspend my disbelief as well as kinda empathise with Jenna because of those real-world aspects. I thought that the dynamic between Jenna and her girlfriend, Holly, felt pretty authentic; when Holly rescues Jenna and is awkward and agitated felt very real and I liked that Church leaned into a believability. I also just really appreciated that this book was queer just because.

The final twist to the story that the Bonewalker / Progenitor / Robert would be able to possess Jenna and thus was no longer dead was a really good way to add a final fight into the story. I feel as though I may be in the majority but I think the ending wasn’t my favourite. I think it could have been interesting if the book had ended after the reveal that Jenna could be possessed or even if Jenna had not survived. This being said, I believe that Jenna and Holly getting a happy ending was very deserved and I am not sure if it would have necessarily worked tonally for Jenna to go through all of the horror that she endured to just die or for Robert to win. 

Jenna and Holly were just brilliant characters and the Bonewalker was delightfully menacing.

 

 

This fucking series. The book equivalent of blue balls. Whoever decided that these books are 4 chilli peppers level of spicy clearly has never met a truly spicy book because just, nope. The thing that really frustrated me is that it wasn’t until pg482 of this book (so 866 pages into the series) that our girl Rosalina finally gets one of the fae to finally give her some vitamin D. It started to get really tedious that Rose would end-up in sexual situations with the various fae in the book but for whatever reason, the scene would kinda get abruptly cut off before any p-in-v would happen. The reason for this seems to be rooted in it causing a triggering on the mating bond in the same way that life or death situations can do so (calling it that that is when the mating bond with Caspian triggered, when she almost died in her first encounter with the goblins). I hate this and it feels dangerously close to some less than great ideas about the sacredness of virginity and how p-in-v is the only way to no longer be a virgin or some bs. I don’t think that this was necessarily an overt thing in the minds of the authors when they wrote this book but unpack it a little and that is what is revealed.

Something about the balance of the fantasy and romance plots of these books feels off and I think it comes down to a sense that the romance plotlines are artificially being extended. I think if I was to rework the series I would have made the romance the initial primary focus so the mating bonds for all of the lads would snap in place first and then I would go deeper with the fantasy / conflict elements of the story. I continue to just feel annoyed that as the reader you know that Rosalina has 5 mates (even if the blurbs are trying to tell us that she only has 4) as well as it being seemingly abundantly clear that her mother is the lost queen of the fae. It just feels as though things are being unnecessarily dragged-out for the sake of it. I wonder if I would feel the same if they didn’t get increasingly long for no real greater payoff? I also really don’t like that the cover design of every book tells you who Rosalina will mate with in that book; if you are gonna drag out the romance over 1000s of pages, maybe keep some secrets for the reader? I am kinda hoping that the pattern breaks in book 3 and/or 4 but I think I also just want to see more Caspian.

For all of the issues that I have with these books, I can’t seem to stop obsessively reading them so I guess that is a point in their favour.

 

 

A poly Beauty and the Beast retelling? Colour me intrigued.

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but feel a little sceptical at what romance book needs 4 400-page books to tell the complete story and, if I am being honest, I am still not completely convinced that this isn’t a story that couldn’t be told is a much more succinct way. I am hopeful that further books will be more focused on the fantasy side of the plot after resolving the romance of the story. I am not sure how I would have done it differently but I think part of my frustration with this book is that the blurb tells you that Rosalina is the mate of all 4 of the fae princes which takes some of the mystery way and it kinda feels like you are waiting for the moment when the characters realise it too in this book. And, spoiler alert, they never really get there. Well, that’s not factually true, Keldarion and Rosalina do have a moment right at the end but he can’t admit it otherwise he will lose her. That was really my biggest frustration with this book because it felt as though we were being denied something and I hated it.

I think my overall feeling with this book was that it was fine but definitely not great. I was a bit thrown by the fact that Rosalina’s world was pretty much contemporary US so we would get occasional pop cultural references. As I write this, I realise that Rosalina exists in a world where she would be very familiar with the story of Beauty and the Beast but doesn’t recognise that she has essentially been transported into that story? Sure 🙃 I don’t think the contemporary elements were overall too jarring but it wasn’t what I had initially expected for this book. 

Some of the queer elements didn’t sit right with me. The first sex scene we got was between Farron and Dayton and it was framed in a really weird way because we saw it through Rosalina’s eyes and it was written as though it served only as titillation for her. There is already a conversation around the way that MM is used in that way by women so to have this scene framed this way was jarring to say the least. There was also, and this could be me connecting the wrong dots, a point where Farron was described as “indecisive” and that seemed to be in relation to his sexuality and that was why he was cursed - ew.

I think there are a lot of ways that this world still needs to be expanded upon and there are a lot of questions remaining unanswered but I did feel a little underwhelmed at best from this book. I also kinda got the ick at something which is just a theory but I hope isn’t true (that Caspian is Rosalina’s brother) so we will see how that plays out…

For all of its flaws, this book was very readable, I just hate that it is dragging the story out so much.

 

 

This was just such a fun surprise for me. From the moment that I started reading, I just did not want to stop and only did take a break because I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer!

This just seemed to hit all of the right marks and I really enjoyed reading Vin and Angelo banter back and forward, clearly wanting one another but not really knowing what to do with those feelings. I loved how vicious both of these characters could be and there is something so delicious about books in this genre where they can put their money where their mouth is and actually kill anyone that lays a hand on their beloved.

The thing that really took me by surprise was just how funny this book was. There were a couple of moments where I had to consciously not spit my juice out after reading a particular good line.

This was one of those books where I just had the five star feelings all of the way through. And now I can’t wait to see what the rest of the series has in store.

 

 

I feel as though this book has gotten a lot of chatter with my mutuals on Insta so when I saw that ARC had become available again, I knew that I wanted to grab the opportunity.

I am honestly not totally sure how I am feeling about this book. I didn’t realise that it wasn’t going to be a standalone which obviously impacts the lens through which you interpret the story from a pacing perspective. I did think there were some things that felt kind of anachronistic or at least dragged me out of the story; for some reason, the main character’s constant smoking felt really annoying and I think a substantial part of that was the fact that I didn’t understand what it added to the story? I did get a feeling like this author was probably a big fan of Sarah J Maas and that bled through into the story so that it just had an overall ACOTAR vibe. This is a very unique story with a somewhat rich lore wholly its own but there were certain interactions that felt kind of familiar.

I am intrigued to see where the series takes us since there is an implication that Baylis may have been playing a long game and was working with Gideon all along. I am hopeful that we will get a lot more of Aelia and Tharan together because I didn’t love her with Caiden whilst Tharan just sizzles. I think that is also a feeling of Tharan having a lot more to offer her and genuinely feeling like he would always have her back.

Ultimately, I think this is a book that took a minute to come up to temperature but by the time I got to the end of the book, I was absolutely gasping for more.

 

 

Theoretically this book should have been a fairly fun romance between a vampire and a newly-minted vampire slayer as they are forced to work together and realise that they may actually have feelings other than hate for one another. Unfortunately, I had several issues with this book that made this a book that didn’t really work for me.

The book opens with probably the vaguest content warnings page that I have ever seen which on one hand, I really appreciate books including content warnings but on the other, it really was insultingly vague. The basic premise of this book is that every time a vampire is turned a person who hates them becomes a vampire slayer as a kind of balance thing. This impacts our main character who is a skinny bartender-slash-actress who wakes-up one morning having gained 24 pounds and having a significantly more buff physique. This change is obviously going to come with a good helping of dysphoria but I felt as though the way this was handled was somewhat clumsy and felt as though it was equating being muscular with being fat and there was also a sprinkling of the tired idea that they only way it is acceptable to not be skinny is if someone is fit. Needless to say, I really did not like the way that this element of the story played-out. As I got towards the end of the book, it occurred to me that I am not really sure whether a physical transformation really added anything to the story in any meaningful way.

Another aspect of the story that didn’t work for me was the relationship between Cassie (the slayer) and Nick (her coworker / the vampire). I completely understood that this was intended to be a cutesy romance and that was not something that I had issue with but rather I did not enjoy the fact that it was insta-love / insta-lust. The book commits the cardinal sin of continuously telling rather than showing that Nick and Cassie have had feelings for one another since they first met but realistically what we got was in the space of a week Cassie went from hating Nick and wanting to kill him to being in love with him 🙃 This was just not enjoyable to read and spoke to a writer who hasn’t honed their craft. I also really didn’t like at one point when a character asserted that Nick had been unkind to Cassie because he secretly liked her… these are grown adults not children and can we maybe not continue to perpetuate a harmful stereotype that hating women is some way of showing affection? No thank you.

The final issue that I want to touch on was the resolution of this book. Maybe around the halfway mark of the book Cassie and the reader are told that a slayer will stop being a slayer if they fall in love with a vampire. At this point, you realise that no matter what happens Cassie ends-up in a situation where she loses. It was never going to be Nick that she lost which means that Cassie has to lose her slayer powers. The book tries to tell the reader that Cassie never really wanted to be a slayer anymore and it was all just about the lessons that she learnt from being a slayer for a week but I couldn’t help feeling a bit disheartened that the supposed happily ever after was Cassie having to sacrifice a part of herself in order to be with Nick whilst he pretty much got everything that he wanted. It just didn’t sit well with me.

I appreciate that this has been a very negative review but that is not to say that this book is an inherently bad book. I genuinely think that this is a book that another reader would really love but that is very much not the kind of reader that I am. Please don’t let my review dissuade you from picking up this book because ultimately the things that are an ick for me are just that, an ick for me, and you may end-up having the absolute best time with this book.

 

 

This book is both a prequel and a sequel to Fallen Thorns. Whilst this book has been carefully edited so that it works as a standalone, I feel as though I got more out of this book because I had read Fallen Thorns; I knew where Ben and Casper’s stories were heading and so certain phrases and moments had a higher emotional impact on me.

At the heart of this story was Ben and Casper’s romance and I just loved it so much, they are so good together and they just deserved the world. Because I knew that Ben is killed (quite brutally, I might add) at the end of Fallen Thorns, I got a pang of sadness every time they referred to being together forever and it particularly stressed me out when we got to the part of the book which overlapped with Fallen Thorns because you could feel the narrative inching closer and closer to disaster. It hurt so much seeing the utterly devastation that Casper goes through at the end of the book as well as having to cope with survivor’s guilt.

I really loved this book and kinda love, kinda hate that we got a glimmer of hope in the author’s note at the end of the book where Baxter alludes to the fact that Ben’s story is not over. As much as I don’t usually love the resurrection trope, I want Ben and Casper to be able to get to see the happiness they have been denied. Here’s to hoping 🤞🏻

 

 

Having read both of White’s previous books, I went into this book with somewhat high expectations even though the synopsis didn’t sound as though something I would necessarily have picked otherwise. This book is quite different from his other works but I would probably say that it is his most brutal and honest work to date. This is a book about a transmasc, neurodivergent character and they are going through some truly horrifying things.

Whilst there is gore in this book and multiple very dark deaths, for me the violence came in the form of the prejudices that these characters faced. Topics of transphobia, homophobia, and classism are all tackled within this story, as well as there being a strong through-line of generational trauma. There is one supernatural element to this story but I would place this story more into a category of mystery / thriller similar to Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby.

I found this book really challenging to read because it was written so well and I could recognise a lot of reality in what these characters were facing. There is also repeated mention of a rather brutal mention to the death of an animal and references to hunting. I think this is a truly incredible book and I think a lot of trans and/or neurodivergent teens and adults will find a kind of comfort in the truth of what is happening within these pages. There is also a catharsis in seeing a type of justice be served.

Because of the variety of triggers and the violence of this book, I do think this is a book that is a little difficult to recommend but I still would say that anyone who might be interested should give it a try. The story does not get easier as it goes on but, as White says in his author’s note at the start of the book, it does have a happy ending.

 

 

As somewhat of a connoisseur of vampire stories, I was incredibly excited to pick this book up when I first heard about it. Whilst I can definitely see a trend to change this, particularly as we are having a vampire renaissance at the moment, a lot of vampire stories seem to be sorely lacking in diversity and the richness that we get when a story taps into a wider breadth of influences. I don’t know enough about Ethiopian folktales to speculate on how much of the vampire mythos is unique to Girma’s imagination versus drawing on traditional stories however there is definitely a wonderful sense of African diaspora woven throughout this story which adds a beautiful dimension to an already incredible story.

I was talking to a group of new friends earlier about this book and I think the best way to describe this book is to say expect the unexpected and also Yos 🥵 I really loved the fact that this book has so many layers to the story but manages them with an expert hand so that the story never feels as though it has too much going-on. For a thoroughly surprising book, it also didn’t feel contrived during any of the twists and turns. This may be Girma’s debut but it is abundantly clear that she has been writing and honing her craft for a very long time.

I can’t wait to read the rest of this series because I generally have no idea where this story might take me but I do know that I am going to enjoy every moment of the ride to get there.

 

 

I absolutely loved this book. I thought it did a really good job of balancing the sweet and sexy slow-burn of the relationship between Vincent and Wesley against a backdrop of harder and heavier themes like Wesley’s grief and Vincent’s family failing to accept him unconditionally. The structure of this novel meant that one chapter might end in a particular character’s POV where they were talking about feeling alone in their emotions then we would immediately see this mirrored in the opposite POV echoing the sentiment. I really like this.

I think that Vincent and Wesley genuinely worked so well together and were an absolute pleasure to read about. There was definitely a sense that the author understood the inherent sexiness present in vampire lore and used it for emotional and comedic impact. There was also a little bit of a nod to the way that vampires and queerness have often been linked in the way that Vincent reflected on the fact that his family turning their back on him because of his vampirism likely would have happened had he ever had the opportunity to come out to them.

I really enjoyed the fact that neither of these characters were perfect and they each had their own baggage but it felt wholly authentic.

This is a series that I am definitely planning on returning to and I look forward to seeing more Vincent and Wesley in later books.