minimicropup's reviews
479 reviews

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This started off great but gradually fizzled out for me. The withholding-things-from-the-reader bits got tiring when it became the main driver of the suspense. I felt increasingly distant from the story the longer it went on.

Note there are spoilers for some Hitchcock films...it'd be kinda weird if there weren't.

Energy: Conniving. Imposing. Duplicitous.

🐺 Growls Over-withholding near the end (literally as someone is about to reveal the big past secret the text skips over it abruptly. Then we watch the characters gasp and make decisions based on that big reveal but we’re completely out of the loop, so I got bored).

🐕 Howls Take character notes. There are a lot of characters, and at first it was hard to keep them all straight (I did get a feel for them eventually).

🐩 Tail Wags Making it clear that the characters aren’t exactly friends so we can dive into the tension right away. Not being sure whether we should root for Alfred and his scheming. Insufferable friend group so it’s fun to watch them squirm. The hotel setting and ‘off’ vibes Alfred's giving.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Set in a Victorian mansion converted to a hotel in a campus town near the White Mountains.

Perspectives (7): A Hitchcock stan who recently opened a Hitchcock-inspired hotel and invites former college film studies friends for a stay. The eighty-something housekeeper and Alfred’s confidante. The five friends – a former restauranteur struggling with substance abuse; a parent and sexual health entrepreneur; a freelance security specialist; a rich soon to be richer heir to their grandfather’s fashion brand; a hedge fund manager unsatisfied in their marriage.

Timeline: Current (2010s or 2020s). October.

🔥 Fuel: If all the friendships are so strained, why did they all agree to stay at the hotel together? What happened between them in college? What is Alfred’s motivation for reuniting with them?

📖 Cred: Suspended disbelief

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Smoke and leather. Bacon and thyme. Crows. Movie memorabilia. TUMS. Velvet pouch. Attic vents.

Atmospheric Hitchcock-inspired hotel
Frenemies reunite suspense
Technologically isolated
Secrets from the past
Found fam gone wrong
Regretful actions snowballing
Long haul vengeance schemes
Popcorn-mystery vibes
First person setting the scene hearing select thoughts and musings

Content Heads-Up: Alcohol abuse (recovery/sobriety; maintenance; temptation/cravings). Alcohol use (recreational, intoxication, hangovers). Car crash (fatal; very brief mention). Loss of parent (as child; as adult). Brain aneurysm (very brief recall). Body shaming (height). Pregnancy. Voyeurism. Sexual content (on page; brief). Infidelity, unrequited love. Divorce. Cancer (brief mention; early diagnosis; terminal). Death, corpse (discovery of). Betrayal. Academic dishonesty. Nicotine (cigarettes; very brief recall). Suicide (implied). Loss of spouse. Murder.

Rep: American. Cis. Hetero. Chinese ancestry. Pale and ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Library Paperback

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The Examiner by Janice Hallett

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funny mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Gobbled this up! This plot is so ridiculous in hindsight but something about how it was written had me invested and felt like it could happen 😁. I recommend the book so you can flip back and forth to double-check things (reading this w/o being able to do that I think I’d start to feel frustrated because it’s quite a tangled plot).

Energy: Cynical. Adventurous. Suspicious.

🐩 Tail Wags Feeling like part of the investigation. Flipping through all the documents, message boards, DMs to piecing things together. The combination of group drama, pettiness, mysteries, and subtle humor. The epistolary format. Getting to know the characters and their personalities before we ever get a clear image of them physically. Playing with assumptions/bias.

Scene: 🇬🇧 Documents and communications related to a new master’s degree in Multimedia Art at Royal Hastings school.

Perspectives (mixed, ~9): Six students of varying ages - A ‘real’ artist whose career spans ten years; an art supplies store owner hoping to switch to artist in retirement; a mature student continuing studies after they paused them to assist the family with running an art gallery; a full-time financial marketer taking a creative course to ‘balance the stress’; a single parent of two kids and freelance graphic designer; the youngest student aimning to be the best in the class. There are also communications and grading discussions from the course leader, course administrator, and external examiner.

Timeline: The academic year from Sept 2023 to June 2024.

🔥 Fuel: Gradually revealed mysteries and clues. Drama, chaos, back-stabbing. Side quests and conspiracies. What is going on with group members behind the scenes? Why is going on with the course leader? Why is the radio making those sounds? Is a student dead or is everyone just caught up in the drama?

📖 Cred: Over-the-top realism

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Vintage radio. Electric minivan. Doodle group chats. Assignments. Cloud based company promotions. Binaural beats. Resin.

Getting the tea, picking up things from messaging apps
Sifting through documents, eavesdropping, immersive epistolary format
Creepy radio
Grad student drama
Satirical (but accurate) portrayals of academia and team/group dynamics
Mini memoirs, essays, and art projects
Mysterious tech organization
Tangled web of twists, fake-outs, and flips the script moments
Decisions snowballing
Dark dramedy mystery
Conspiracy, exposes, infiltration conundrums

Content Heads-Up: Burglary (brief off page recall). PTSD (brief off page recall). Organized crime. Drug trafficking (brief recall). Childhood poverty, abandonment (brief recall; off page). Murder. Sabotage. War (brief mentions, discussion/topic).

Rep: British. Irish. Second/third generation Bengali British. Chinese British. Second generation Albanian British. Visual impairment. Ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Library Hardcover

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The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

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dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I’m so glad I gave in to my FoMO. I fully expected ‘thriller filler’ based on that synopsis, but this was almost a low-key parody of thriller filler. I loved the intrigue and realism without idealism. Also, streaming dramedy miniseries asap pls 🤩.

Energy: Responsive. Grounded. Astute.

🐩 Tail Wags Refreshing use of thriller tropes (no drawn-out withholding or convoluted action scenes). Side-eyeing all the characters at some point. The dynamic between the main character and his sister. Abigail. Balance of humour and tension. Low key clues sprinkled throughout. Pacing. Making predictions (some wrong, some spot-on). Unsettling scenes (the cereal and milk…wtf 🤢). Believable dialogue and behaviour. Admittedly unsatisfying, but all too real ending that felt like a statement on the struggle it is for parents to see their kids as they truly are. The contrast between the Deeply Empathetic One and the Disaffected Psychopathic One.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Set in Hopps Ferry, New Hampshire; Boston, Massachusetts; and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Perspective: A fifty-something UPS driver and parent estranged from their adult daughter the past three years gets an unexpected invite back into their life and to attend their surprise wedding.

Timeline: Current (2020s?) or not too distant future / alt universe. ☀️ Summer.

🔥 Fuel: Why was our main character estranged from his daughter? Can we trust his interpretation of events? Is he too overprotective, or does he intuit his daughter needs protecting? How will the wedding go? Where is the missing person and what happened to them? Why can’t he meet the mother of his son-in-law?

📖 Cred: Realistic

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Lady Evelyn’s Complete Guide to Wedding Etiquette. UPS. Daddy long legs. Mineral spirits, turpentine, linseed oil. Whiskey. Jazz music. Milk and cereal. Heatwave.

Through a father’s eyes domestic suspense
Short chapters, easy reading
Road trip elements
Dramedy vibe
Summer camp of luxury
Emotionally invested amateur sleuthing
1% behaving badly, dark secrets
How far would you go for your grown kid?
Get Out vibes, something’s ‘off’
Exploration of Nature vs Nurture
Tagging along with the main character, piecing together the puzzle, getting his thoughts first person

Content Heads-Up: Loss of parent (as preteen). Brain aneurysm (very brief mention). War (1990s, Veteran, brief recalls). Drug abuse, overdose (implied, discussed). Cannabis (edibles, recreational). Microdosing. Intoxication. Vomit. Spiders. Fire (building, fatal; off page). First responder fatality (off page mention). Physical violence (brief on page). Sexual content (brief on page; consenting). Infidelity. Cover-ups, destroying evidence. Murder. Personality disorder. Corruption. Blackmail (off page mention). Suicide (brief but graphic, on page). Car crash (injuries). Human rights violations (very brief mention).

Rep: American. Congolese peripheral character. Cis. Hetero. Polish ancestry. Foster parent.

📚 Format: Library Hardcover

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The Dark Becomes Her by Judy I. Lin

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I loved the psychological horror, vivid imagery, and challenges the main character faced. What dulled it for me was the lengthy, hard-to-visualize action scenes and overly chatty Big Bad villain moments.

Energy: Secretive. Thoughtful. Enduring.

🐕 Howls The action scenes were dense and lasted a long time with so many moving parts it was hard to keep track of who was where and who was still alive, what was happening. Dialogue in the final battle scenes was a little cheesy and cliché with the villain taunting and explaining everything in the middle of high-stake chaos. I pictured them yelling over the noise of destruction, which just felt cartoonish (to be fair, I’m not a big action-adventure scene reader, so that may have been part of it).

🐩 Tail Wags Intense, vivid imagery that kinda scared me sometimes. Effortlessly formed scenes in my mind. Painful but all too real exploration of good kids being crushed by the intense pressure of parents’ expectations.

Scene: 🇨🇦 Set in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Perspective: Our 16-year-old main character loves playing piano, but their parents’ view it only as an ‘in’ to a good University. They also can see ghouls, thought it’s never been a problem before…unit now.

Timeline: 2020s. 🍂 ❄️Fall and winter.

🔥 Fuel: Prose. World-building and spiritual system. Intrigue. High stakes emotional investment. Quests and journeys. What are the macabre things our main character is seeing? Can they hurt her? Why has her little sister changed so much? Will she be able to save her?

📖 Cred: Fantastical folklore realism

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Bus 22. Alleyway. Tiger tattoo. Half-empty mall. Bubble tea. Playing piano. Talisman. Snowflakes. Darkness.

Ghoulish gore and frights
Strict parents, denied interests
Strained sibling bonds
Psychological Taiwanese folklore fantasy horror
Possession and spirits
Curses and talismans
Vivid, immersive world building
Short, one-more-page chapters
Wholesome hero romance
Spiritual war and sacrifice
Good vs evil in plain sight urban atmosphere
Seeing through the main character’s eyes narrative style

Content Heads-Up: Pandemic (very brief mentions; change in parental employment). Vomit. Racism (discrimination; memories). Hierarchical/strict upbringing. Murder (on page). Blood. Fire (structure). Body horror (injuries, attacks).

Rep: Canadian. Second generation Taiwanese. Cis. Hetero. Queer. Bi, questioning. Lesbian. Pale and ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Library Hardcover

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No One Will Know by Rose Carlyle

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emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This was an over-the-top, popcorn-style thriller that was ridiculous but kinda fun. Everyone’s insufferable, so it’s not too stressful to watch them all get their comeuppance hehe 🤪.

If you’re sensitive about topics like neglect, mother-baby bonds, or irresponsible caregiving, this might be a distressing read.

Energy: Diverting. Derelict. Scathing.

🐕 Howls The main character’s level of denial could be frustrating sometimes when she overexplained her thinking. Super predictable plot. I think I would have found this dull/annoying sometimes if I read it as text – as audio the classic villain monologues were kind of fun.

🐩 Tail Wags The train wreck of a story. The main character making one bad decision after another. Still entertaining even though I wasn’t rooting for anyone. Easy listening audiobook.

Scene: 🇦🇺 Set on a remote Tasmanian island, Australia.

Perspectives (2): Our MC finds out they’re pregnant just as the father, their new boyfriend, dies in a car crash. Penniless and alone, they are met with skepticism from his rich family who they were on the way to meet.

We also get the perspective later on in the book of a character with a past who has just gotten married and wants a baby.

Timeline: Current (2010s or 2020s). Six years after a birth. Eight years before a birth.

🔥 Fuel: Twists and turns. Conflict, drama, tea. Pacing. High stakes. Will the main character take the offer to be a nanny on the remote island? Will she be able to keep up the façade if she does? Can she trust her employers to keep their side of the bargain?

📖 Cred: Over-the-top Melodrama

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Potential unreliable narrator
Secret inheritance scheme
Keeping secrets, in cahoots
Disaster of a situation, red flags everywhere
Twisty, easy-to-follow, plot-driven narratives
Melodramatic popcorn thriller plots
How far would you go for your child?
Insufferable characters and caricatures
Tagging along with the MC who tells us all her thoughts/feels/plans/assumptions

Content Heads-Up: Sexual content (off page, brief). Pregnancy, birth (on page). Loss of romantic partner. Car accident (on page; brief description, fatal). Fire (accident, burns, scarring). Kidnapping (baby). Trafficking (

babies for adoption; geckos for pet trade

). Smuggling, organized crime, gun violence. Narcissism.

Rep: Australian. Cis. Hetero. Pale skin tones.

📚 Format: Library Audio

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Model Home by Rivers Solomon

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

This was unexpectedly heavy and spends a lot of time exploring the horrors people inflict on each other. I found it overwhelming, but I’d recommend if you’re looking for a philosophical, slow-burn horror that mixes stream-of-consciousness with grotesque, strange moments.

Energy: Disorienting. Bleak. Confessional.

🐕 Howls The philosophizing around the halfway point (that might be a me thing). Long stretches of reflection that were heavy and sad (this could be a 'tail wag' for many though). Bizarro confusing moments got tiring after a while. Kept mixing up the siblings (probably the similar names, they had their own personas).

🐩 Tail Wags The “wait…what?” moments. Confusing bizarro and grotesque moments. Mix of rooting for and being horrified by the main character. The ‘haunted’ house being a newer build. The nonsensical and unhingedness.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Set mostly in a gated community of North Dallas, Texas, USA

Perspective: Our MC grew up in a gated community in the house that once served as a model home during development. As an adult, they live in England with their 14-year-old child. The death of their parents prompts a return to their hometown and reuniting with their siblings.

We get brief perspective of the MC’s 14-year-old who meets up with a friend they met on social media.

Timeline: Current (2010s or 2020s).

🔥 Fuel: Foreshadowing. Atmospheric tension. Family and relationship dynamics. Layered secrets. Provoking thoughts and feels. Unpredictability. What happened to our main character in childhood? Why are their parents dead? What does it all mean? Are they going to be okay?

📖 Cred: Hyper-realistic surrealism

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Dried flowers. Roasted potatoes. Lemon disinfectant. Sawdust. Grilled hotdogs. French double doors. Greasy pizza. Wide highway. Shopping mall.

Thrown in the story, coming in to focus as we go along
Bizarre, philosophical literary social horror
Strange moments treated as mundane
Haunted house or haunted fam?
Hints of unreliable narrator
Flashback to childhood vignettes
Toxic suburbia
Return to hometown
Heartstring horrors and gut punch endings
Humans are monsters
Philosophical exploration of grief, family dynamics, sibling bonds, parenthood, mental illness, racism, and child abuse

Content Heads-Up: Dissociation. Food restriction (as child). Depression, low moods (symptoms). Ambiguous diagnoses (personality disorder, dissociative, generalized anxiety, complex-PTSD). Loss of parents (as adult). Corpses (discovery of). Racism (graphic; disbelief, threats, prejudice, persecution, mental attacks; hypocrisy). Murder-suicide (implied). Chemical burns, scars. Animal torture, death (off page mention; very brief;

dog, fish, ant farm, guinea pig

). Cancer (brief mention; cervical). Grief. Suicide attempt (recall). Suicidal ideation, planning (discussion; on page). Sexual content (consenting; on page). Homophobic slurs. Grooming, adult/minor relationship. Munchausen by proxy (discussion). Gaslighting. Home invasion. Child abuse, pedophilia (rape, sexual abuse,

female perpetrator

). Fire (building; arson).

Rep: American. Mixed race (Black, White). American British. Cis. Genderfluid. Trans. Hetero. Queer. Lesbian. Dark, brown, freckled, light brown, and ambiguous skin tones. Fat. Jewish convert. Diabetes. Autism. Dyslexia.

📚 Format: Library Hardcover

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Scrap by Calla Henkel

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dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The is so entertaining and intriguing, especially if you enjoy character-driven chaos!

Hold off on this if you haven’t read Gone Girl but plan to soon. There are spoilers for that book in this one.

Energy: Neurotic. Misunderstood. Adrift.

🐕 Howls The moments when the mystery took a back seat to Esther’s character development and reflecting on her choices, but it was still interesting.

🐩 Tail Wags The mix of literary fiction and mystery. Story is both entertaining and heartbreaking. Fun main character to follow (she’s insufferable yet oddly sympathetic). Captivating and cringe-worthy character development. Piecing together the puzzle alongside the MC while she jumps to conclusions without thinking things through. Unexpected bittersweet ending.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Set mainly in Asheville, North Carolina.

Perspective: A book binder artisan tries to reconnect with a friend at a post-art show dinner without success. Instead they are stuck at a table with someone who really wants to hire them to craft a family scrapbook.

Timeline: 2018

🔥 Fuel: Emotional investment. Unreliable narrator. Intrigue and secrets. Multi layered plot. What was the incident at the studio? Why is there so much secrecy around the scrapbook our main character was hired to make? Why is she so invested in this family? Is her client okay?

📖 Cred: Semi-realistic/plausible

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Barn studio. True crime podcast on Bluetooth speakers. Tortilla soup. Report cards. Family photos. Eggshell white paper. Burner phone. Oil paint. Honey buns. Gone Girl. Rose quartz.

Obsessive, morally grey main character chaos
True crime commentary and stories
Unexpected sidekick
Mysterious family history and drama
Commentary on true crime, law enforcement, wealth, consumerism, and need
Character driven stories
Was there even a crime?
Literary cozy mystery amateur sleuthing
Sprinkling of popcorn thriller energy
Infiltrating the inner circle sneakiness
Thrown in the story, tagging along with the main character first person

Content Heads-Up: Alcohol (intoxication, hangovers). Loss of parent (as preteen; as adult). Alcoholic parent. Car crash (fatal; recall). Intoxicated driving. Anti-police sentiments (character opinion). Infanticide (implied). Psychopathy (child; implied). Loss of child (infant; SIDS). Loneliness. Long term relationship break-up (unexpected). Infidelity, betrayal (descriptive recall). Mass shooting (school; off page recalls, brief). Adult/minor sex, non-consensual sexual images. Suicidal ideation. Home invasion, threats, drugging (brief). Domestic abuse. Emotionally distant parent. Obsession, obsessive thinking. Cancer (lung; brief discussion).

Rep: American. Dutch ancestry, Croatian, Armenian and Pakistani heritage, and Polish peripheral characters. Cis. Lesbian. Olive, ivory, pink, and ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Library Digital

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Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Well…that was certainly different. It’s hard to describe without spoilers but be prepared for all the Icks. And check the content warnings – none of them are drawn out but things pop up in sudden gut punch moments.

Energy: Disturbing. Ambiguous. Mechanical.

🐕 Howls: The exploration of taboos and normalcy sometimes felt predictable in a test-the-limits-trying-to-gross-you-out style. The story felt a bit dated at times with huge pressure from family to marry and have kids, but that may be cultural or reflect pressures some still experience, so it wasn’t entirely lost on me.

🐩 Tail Wags: Disturbing in a wtf-is-happening-one-more-page way. Rationalizing ‘alien’ thoughts in unexpected and discomforting ways. Weird, thought-provoking commentary on societal norms. How the core plot is left open to reader interpretation. The cringey, culty, strange, unsettling energy and ending.

Scene: 🇯🇵 Set in the mountains of Akishina, near Nagano, Japan.

Perspectives: Our 11-year-old main character is on family vacation at their grandparents when an incident occurs with their cousin. We then see their experience of summer school and how they come to discover their identity. Then we skip to them in their 30s, married and returning to the house where their cousin now lives.

Timeline: Unspecified (guessing 1990s and 2010s). ☀️❄️Summer and winter.

🔥 Fuel: Moral quandaries. Intrigue and strangeness. Provoking thoughts and feels. Unpredictability. What is wrong with our main character? What will they do next? How will they reconcile their childhood views in their adult life?

📖 Cred: Bizarro

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Warm breeze. Incense. Baby Factory. Brainwashing. Animal smell. Sour dock. Popinpobopia.

Horrific moments through the eyes of a child
Cousin love
Cover/sham marriage
Social commentary on societal norms and hive mindedness
Questionable reliability main character
Humanity through alien eyes
Revisiting childhood
Deranged, traumatized, or reality?
Taboos weird fiction
The dark side of not outgrowing childhood beliefs
Moments of bizarro grotesquery with an almost clinical writing style

Content Heads-Up: Emotional and physical child abuse (parental rejection and frustration). Child sexual abuse, pedophilia (on page,

teacher-student

). Dismissal/disbelief of reported abuse. Victim blaming. Suicidal ideation, planning (on page; brief). Familial pressure (to reproduce, to marry). Incest (preteens; on page). Loss of parent (as adult). Murder, violence, blood, physical attack. Home invasion. Edible horror, gore (

consuming flesh, self-mutilation

Rep: Japanese. Cis. Hetero. White and ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Kobo Plus

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A Girl Like Us by Anna Sophia McLoughlin

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.

This was dragging on and on, so I skimmed ahead to the ending, and this sounds so mean, but it was written as if it was such an original plot that the reader would need a lot of hand-holding and explaining to understand it….except it's based on common, predictable tropes. Which is fine if a story is intriguing enough to carry it, but for me, it wasn’t.

The writing is okay, but the book is too long with too much filler.
The pacing is incredibly slow. Entire chapters seemed dedicated to rehashing information we already know without offering new details or moving the story forward. It felt like I was reading the same internal musings over and over.
This is a story type I’ve read (and watched) countless times and I like these tropes. But nothing felt intriguing. At 10% in I could predict where this story was going and that’s where it went. It relies so heavily on being twisty that it becomes boring if you already know where it’s headed.
I like melodrama in rich people behaving badly/secret past stories, but this felt more like a drawn-out soap opera with dramatic ‘dun dun dun’ moments that didn’t land for me.
All the characters lacked depth. We’re frequently reminded one of the characters is ‘not like the other girls’ in a forced, one-dimensional way.

📚 Format: Advance Reader’s Copy from Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley

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Lies on the Serpent's Tongue by Kate Pearsall

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

This one just wasn’t for me. It sounded so atmospheric and intriguing but ended up feeling too muddled with too much going on and I lost interest.

Energy: Agitated. Adamant. Capable.

🐕 Howls Had the potential to be atmospheric (set in the fall), but I didn’t feel it. Descriptions didn’t deliver the spooky and cozy vibes I was hoping for. A bit boring (but maybe it’s for at a younger YA audience?). Story was very “tell, not show” with things explained in a quick unengaging way. So many little side plots going on with spirits, dimensions, creatures, family drama, romantic chemistry, book of secrets, spells, ingredients, supernatural abilities etc. but always stopped just short of me getting invested.

🐩 Tail Wags The setting. The idea of supernatural sensory abilities.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Set in Caball Hollow, Appalachia in the US.

Perspective: Our main character is a teen living in a close-knit family of sisters with a connection to the land and magical wisdoms passed through the generations. They can smell lies and recent events cause them to believe something is happening in the magical realms.

Timeline: Current (2010s or 2020s). 🍂 September, October.

🔥 Fuel: Sense of adventure. Quests and journeys. Romantic tension. Race against time. Good vs evil. Why are people losing memories? What is happening to the bone tree? What are the intentions of others? Is our main character in danger?

📖 Cred: Magical realism

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Papery smoke. Burnt meat. Burning leaves. Bone tree. Magpie. Ginseng.

Close-knit family dynamics
Inherited supernatural abilities, connection to the land
Forest service volunteering
Haunted hillside
Book of spells, magical tomes
Local legends creature feature
Good vs evil fantastical
Otherworld politics and power plays spilling into this world
Enemies to lovers and sacrificed love romance
First person narratives, character telling us a story

Content Heads-Up: Physical violence. Blood, injury. Death. Vandalism. Prejudice.

Rep: American. Cis. Hetero. Fair and deep brown skin tones.

📚 Format: Advance Reader’s Copy from Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, and NetGalley.

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minimicropup's reviews 479 reviews

minimicropup's reviews
479 reviews