Bright Ruined Things by Samantha Cohoe

February 15, 2022 – 352 pages

This patch of ocean had bean a dead zone, once. Ships had sailed around for miles to avoid it. Cartographers had marked is with the image of a storm and the word tempest.
Lord Prosper had changed all that. Now, I rarely saw a cloud.

ARC, Subject to change

I received an arc of this book in from Wednesday Books in exchange for an honest review.

Content warnings: Power imbalances involving rich men and young girls, allusions to drugs, prostitution, a character being ‘outed,’ discussions of blood magic, use of guns, discussion of vomiting

Samantha Cohoe is quickly proving to me that she’s an author I can rely on for a good time. This is the second book she’s released, the second I’ve read as an ARC, and the second I’ve hit the twenty percent mark and simply… not been able to put the book down.

Bright Ruined Things follows Mae, a girl orphaned by her custodian father, left on the private island he worked on. Mae has never known anything else, and what a place to be isolated in: she lives on the Prosper island, where the Prosper patriarch found spirits and wells of aether and was able to amass a fortune off of the magic. She has never been to a mundane land without spirits flitting around doing tasks, and she’s terrified to no longer be allowed to stay. When things start going wrong and a spirit ends up hurt, Mae is pulled in many directions by each Prosper she knows, and she has to decide just how far she’s willing to go to belong.

A few chapters in, I was wondering what was so enrapturing about this book, and I settled on the dialogue. The characters felt like they were leaping off the page to bicker around me, and I couldn’t get enough. I feel like if Cohoe ever wanted to write a script she’d ace it, honestly. So many of the statements people left Mae to puzzle over were wrenching my heart, and everyone’s constantly changing motives and perspectives raised the stakes sufficiently even when I had no real idea what was going on with the island.

This is a retelling / re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and so some things are predictable in that way, but a lot of the character dynamics really had me curious. Some of the roles are switched (I believe Mae would have been our Miranda but she is not related to the Prospers in this), I was beyond surprised at how much I loved Ivo, and how much I wished he could simply explain things without finding myself placing blame on him for what he withheld. I liked the time period chosen for this retelling – it feels fitting for the 20’s to be dealing with this level of magical grandeur and selfishness.

The real kicker, and probably what pulls this so close to its inspiration, is how maddening the mindsets everyone has can be. This is one of those books where everyone’s decision making and opinions makes you wish you could play Whack-a-mole with the lot of them and sort out their priorities – but since I read this so quickly it wasn’t a grating thing, it just felt more akin to how you’d want to throw your remote at the heroine in a rom-com movie for not seeing what’s right in front of her. Except, with everything, lol.

This story also takes place throughout the span of a couple of days, with the majority taking place over one night. Sometimes, a pace like that can be dizzying, threads easily lost, but here it was easy to track because the chessboard is the island and we watch Mae move around the board and learn from her interactions with the other pieces at play – it simply becomes “which of these is the danger to Mae” and “how long until she sees the truth of it”. It’s quick, and fun, and even when I didn’t like some characters (like Miles), I was never dreading moments with any of them – just craving answers. Chloe Gong called this “deftly plotted” and I really have to agree. It feels like a book from an author with dozens of books under her belt, not two.

I don’t know, given some time I can probably find more intelligible things to say about this book, but I’ll leave you with this: from its absolutely fitting title to the perfect ambiguity of its ending, I was taken on a damn fun ride and I didn’t once want to get off.

Little Thieves by Margaret Owens

512 pages – October 12, 2021

It has been nearly thirteen years since Death and Fortune claimed me for their own, and I have come far enough through winter and cold that almost no one calls me Vanja now.

ARC, subject to change

I received an advanced copy from Henry Holt & Company in exchange for an honest review on release.

Okay – full transparency, the last 75% of this book is a 5 star for me, no questions asked. The first act simply felt like a car without gas that I had to force myself to push uphill until it could get the downward momentum needed to enthrall me. It was likely something on my end, having never read an Goose Girl retelling or the original, but I just wasn’t pulled in by Vanja until the catalyst.

Once that happened though, and all the players came into the picture, I couldn’t really think about anything but reading this. It took me a few days (it’s 500 pages but it felt longer somehow), but I was committed to the story and finding out how Vanja and her friends got out of the ever-looming danger they were in.

Vanja was abandoned by her mother at a crossroads, left to the gods of Death and Fortune because it was she was believed she’d be horrible luck to her mother. Death and Fortune become godmothers to Vanja, watching over her as she lives as a servant, but they leave her with an ultimatum at her darkest moment – she must claim one of them and become their servant. This is not an option to Vanja, who has only wanted them to be mothers to her, and so she plans her own alternative – assuming the life of the princess she served and planning an escape from the land they command.

Vanja was a tricky character to love, in large part due to the rocky beginning for me, but her motivations and backstory really make it impossible not to love and root for her. I won’t spoil that, of course, but if you’re asking “how could I love a protagonist who stole a girl’s life and sent her to live on the streets,” I promise you, Owens answers that question very satisfyingly. Watching her struggle even when her Godmothers offer her help made me look at her differently, wondering what was underneath the original opinion I held. She’d rather die to a curse than accept their help, and that spoke to the broken daughter in me. By the end of the book I was subconsciously adding Vanja to my list of favorite protagonists, so the emotional journey in this book is top notch.

A not insignificant amount of the love I hold for this book is due to Emeric and Ragne – two characters that absolutely steal the show and endeared themselves to me almost instantly. The former, a junior “prefect” (think cop) who is there to investigate the string of burglaries that has landed Vanja in her expansive ocean of Very Hot Water, and the latter who is the daughter of the god who curses Vanja in the first place. They’re both representatives of the very real danger that Vanja faces, and yet they are the vital to the solution – along with Gisele, the girl whose life Vanja stole (who actually plays a decent role in this story and while she’s the least likable to me, she has some damn good moments). Also – the dialogue and banter between Vanja and both of these characters is amazing, and well worth the read alone.

I loved the plot of this – with enough action and intrigue to keep me guessing while also answering every question I had. Often with a standalone, there will be strings dropped along the way, not tied into the final bow at the end, but Owens does a really good job of not letting anything slip away. I really loved how Vanja’s transformation wasn’t as cut and dry as she thought it would be, and I was metaphorically biting my nails as she took the reins and controlled her own story at the end.

Little Thieves is out on October 12 and you can preorder it below.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indiebound

October TBR!

Happy Spoopy month everyone!

I love October so much, it’s one of my favorite months. There’s nothing better than curling up with a hot drink and either watching a Halloween movie or reading a creepy book to get into the festive mood. I tried to match my TBR to the vibes I’ll be hoping to have, and I have 12 books that I really think I can get to!

Again I’m happy with the ratios in this TBR – all by women but with diverse perspectives and at least one sapphic relationship (I’m really hoping to find more in these pages). I have a few arcs here (The Gilded Cage, Anatomy: A Love Story, Bright Ruined Things, and The Bone Shard Emperor) which should help get my Netgalley percentage back into a place where I feel comfortable (I try to stay above 90% but I’ve been slacking!).

We’re doing another book bingo in my online book club! I’ll be working to match these books to it, but I’ll provide it here if anyone wants a spoopy book bingo! I purchased the background from Shoprooble, so it’s not my background image and is just being used for fun amongst friends! Find Rachel’s shop and support her art here: https://shoprooble.com/

Don’t mind the middle square, my book club is full of monster fuckers LOL

Now, my thoughts going in to some of the books this month!

I was disappointed in book three in the From Blood and Ash series, The Crown of Gilded Bones, so I’m really hoping that this prequel series restores my faith in that world – I didn’t hate it, but it really put a damper on my excitement for the story overall.

Just me thinking about how mid series books so often hurt me

In other, lighter news, I adored Samantha Cohoe’s debut, A Golden Fury, so getting the ARC for her next book was really exciting! I’m hoping to love it, review it, and then be able to do the book tour for it! I haven’t really enjoyed a book set in the 20s before, for some reason the flapper era really doesn’t appeal to me, but I have faith in Cohoe.

I tossed in a couple of hopefully cute romances so I can have pick-me-up books at the ready if any of these hurt me (if my friends ratings are right, The Girls I’ve Been certainly will). I’ve been one of the few people who hasn’t really liked the Brown Sisters books – though book 1 had amazing chronic pain representation – but I’m always willing to give more books a try if I like the writing style.

I stuck to 12 books again for this TBR, even though I might be able to read more. I’m really riding the high of reading so much for September, so I really need to keep that energy up! I’m at 94/123 books for the year, so I’m getting close!!

What are you planning on reading this month? Have you read any of these? I’d love to hear about it!

Happy reading!

September wrap up!

Well, the month is over, and my book club’s reading challenge is at its halfway point. I was really hoping this challenge would kick my ass into gear so I could catch up to my reading goal (I try to one-up my reading from the year before, so I’m hoping to read 123 books this year) – thankfully it did!

I read 23 books this month!

I’m really proud of myself! I wasn’t expecting to read this much but it really puts me on track – if I can have another month like this then I can relax for the holidays!

Here’s what I read! (ratings are in the bottom left corner of the book cover)

The coolest thing, I think, was how varied my reads were! I had a few of each rating, but I feel good about this month overall (the books I didn’t like were quick at least, with the exception of The Inheritance Games.

My favorite read this month? If I’m being honest, The Love Hypothesis, but since I’ve read that book quite a few times before its release, and the same is true of my second favorite (Legendborn), I’ll pick a new read. I think it has to be Malice by Heather Walter. It’s a sapphic retelling of Maleficent’s origins, and it scratched every ‘dark fairytale retelling’ itch I had. Sometimes retellings will ask one new question and throw in some gore, but this really dug into the intricate differences between our Maleficent, Alice, and the other fairies – while also having a lot of things to say about exploitation, heteronormativity, and the things we do to feel safe after trauma. I loved the atmosphere, the characters, and the end scene had me craving violence in the best kind of way. I can’t wait for the sequel!

My least favorite? Thinking about this one surprised me, because it wasn’t one of my lowest rated ones that popped in. Really, when I think about it, it has to be The Inheritance Games. I wanted so much more than I got from that book, and it was really hard to get through once I realized I wasn’t getting the book I thought I was. Watch Knives Out instead.

(plus then you’ll get to look at Chris Evans)

This month I read a grand total of 8,996 pages with an average of 391 pages per book. My rating average for the month was 3.30/5 which is better than last month when I read less than 1/3 of the books! That’s a win in my book.

I also read 11 out of the 12 books I’d put on my TBR for the month – an unheard of thing from me. I didn’t get to Ariadne because it’s got sad vibes and I needed more serotonin.

My recs from this list:
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (Pacific Rim but poly and with the most badass female protagonist),
Malice by Heather Walter (Maleficent is gay and also reddie to fight),
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen (Goose Girl retelling with all the sass and demisexual rep),
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (fake dating with a professor x student relationship and more heart than I’ve ever read in a romcom) (One of my all-time faves)
The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (fake dating between coworkers during a large family wedding)
With You Forever (marriage of convenience with a family friend)
Hook, Line, and Sinker (friends to lovers with good discussions about the sexualization of young men)
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (arthurian legend retelling where the round table is real and part of a constant war against demons, hugely amazing discussions about grief and systemic racism) (One of my all-time faves)

Have you guys read any of these? I’d love to know!

I hope your September was calm and cozy, and you found some good books!

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

384 pages – September 14, 2021

“Ssh.” His arm slid around her waist, his hand coming to rest on her hip in a gesture that should have been unpleasant but just felt reassuring. His voice was low when he added, “It’s fine.” The words vibrated in her ear, rich and warm. “More material for my Title IX complaint.”

Ali Hazelwood

Disclaimer: I have conversed with this author on occasion in fandom spaces – I highly doubt she would remember or know my username but I feel like I should say that, lol

This book is the cause of so many spontaneous smiles for me lately – I finished my 3rd read of The Love Hypothesis (though I’ll admit to having read Head over Feet at least five times), and this is my first time reading the finished copy. I’m a shameless shill for this book too, and I purchased more copies than is likely considered sane in order to support its release.

Fair warning, anyone who dislikes a canon Star Wars ship from the sequel trilogy should know that this original fiction book with original characters did start in its earliest form as a reylo fanfiction. You’d be surprised how many books start as fanfiction (from recent releases, Serpent & Dove(Nina and Matthias from SoC) and Red, White, and Royal Blue(The Social Network)) – there is no shame in using existing characters to practice your writing, and anyone who judges a book for existing as a fanfic in earlier drafts can honestly just fuck off. If you read the first draft of any book compared to the final, you’d realize how silly you sound criticizing this or acting like it condemns the work.

Sorry, soapbox rant over.

Olive is a graduate student at Stanford University, studying biology and specializing in early detection of pancreatic cancer (content warning for discussion of Olive losing her mother to this disease). When her friend Anh reveals a crush a boy Olive went on two dates with, Olive feels determined to convince Anh that she’s fine with it by… kissing the first person she bumps into when Anh is watching. This just happens to be Adam Carlsen, a professor at Stanford with a reputation for being an absolute ass.

What magic must be in Ali Hazelwood’s fingers to have every page of this book inject dopamine straight into my veins as I read. Olive and Adam are pushed into so many awkward scenarios by Anh, who worries that Olive closes herself off too much and needs help showing Adam how much she cares. My friends felt Anh was too meddlesome, but it makes sense for me when there’s compounded guilt for dating her “ex” and also noticing a longtime trend of her best friend to not put herself out there. It’s not exactly appropriate, but I couldn’t help but understand that Anh wasn’t doing it to be a pushy meddler, but to help Olive see what was in front of her eyes (especially when Olive spends every conversation with Anh trying to downplay the fake relationship and Anh… has eyeballs and is casting much doubt.

All of these awkward scenarios lead to Olive and Adam opening up to each other in such an organic (heh) and natural way that I couldn’t help but fall in love with their relationship. Adam is blunt and crass to everyone but Olive – his constant insistence to always be on her team, always rooting for her to see herself the way he does, it’s some of the best stuff to find in a romance novel. Olive, likewise, pours every ounce of her heart into the people she cares about, and Adam becomes no exception. She takes his needs into consideration, she doesn’t let him close himself off, and she does everything she can to see things from his perspective.

In short, they’re very good for each other and the book is full of scenes where you get to see their playful dynamic build into love.

Plus, the smut is exquisite, and every time I reread I find myself anticipating when they’re finally kiss even though I fully appreciate the build up! It’s just so satisfying.

Plus, everyone knows I’m obsessed with rom-coms that are smart enough to have an epilogue, and this one is no exception. It’s a damn good one too.

I look forward to rereading this whenever I feel down, and I will be waiting for a movie adaptation (we even have the perfect fancast built in, courtesy of a certain Space Opera)

The Love Hypothesis is out now and you can order it from any of the links below:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indiebound

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

September 21, 2021 – 400 pages

Hate women? Don’t be ridiculous! The world wouldn’t function without women! Who would bear our children, make our meals, sew our clothes, warm our beds, and so, so, so much more. Please.

Nobody in this world hates women in general. They just hate the ones who won’t listen. Who think they can break all the rules and get away with it. So tell me, Pilot Wu, are you one of them?

ARC, subject to change

I was provided an ARC by Penguin Teen in exchange for an honest review.

What a wild ride this book was! It became a “Read Now” option on Netgalley and so we all grabbed it to buddy read. Our chat has just been full of “!!!!!!!” since we started it, and I’m so beyond glad we found this book and author.

I can’t summarize the book any better than the publisher has, so I suggest you read that here. Zhao asked herself “what if Pacific Rim took place in a sexist ass world where women became collateral damage in a battle against giant aliens” and she answered it in the most badass way possible.

Zetian is… there are no words for her. She exists in a world where every possible variable has been molded to keep her down and yet she stands all the taller for it. She demands the life she deserves, and even when she’s resolved to not get that at the book’s start, she demands payment for her own departure to death. Her family didn’t care about her life and when her sister is murdered, she knows she is the only person who can and will seek justice. There is a courage to Zetian that I see so rarely in female protagonists – a courage rooted very fairly in fear but persevering anyway, a flower growing up through concrete because it has to.

The plot felt unconventional in that it doesn’t follow a typical structure. I kept waiting for it to hit pauses and find certain story beats but it didn’t – it just kept going and forcing me to pay attention.

I can’t spend too much time talking about the characters of Li Shimin and Yizhi Gao without spoiling the book but… please just read this for them and Zetian. There is something so beautiful about these three that can’t be described because it must be experienced. I loved the dynamic and would have accepted this as an 800 page book if it meant more scenes with them.

This is an incredibly feminist book, as should be expected from its premise. I can’t understate this though: please go into this book expecting it to be a feminist book with feminist quotes and graphic sexism against women. I don’t think this book loses anything for being as on-the-nose as it was (and it was definitely in your face), but I don’t want anyone to expect anything differently. It’s not like that girlboss scene in Endgame though, it’s more like when you get to watch Scarlet Witch fucking wreck someone after they knocked her down. That fear you see in Thanos’ eyes when she comes at him? That’s what this book feels like. Female vengeance pressed into pages with ink that I’d shoot into my veins if I could.

It’s obvious that this author loved Pacific Rim and took a lot of inspiration from it, but the way she describes the Chrysalis and the mechanics of the yin-yang seats, this becomes her own world very quickly. It felt, to me, like when an author gets permission to write their spin on a popular character. This is Zhao’s sandbox now. Readers get kinda dropped into the world but there’s plenty of cultural world-building and descriptions that simply make sense. I don’t know how to explain it, but sometimes an author is describing something technical and I’m left BAFFLED at how it’s all supposed to work, but here I was completely on board. Plus it uses mechanics and aspects familiar to me – I knew what qi was and I just pictured all the Chrysalis appearances to be like.. mechanical Sailor Moon transformations. I highly recommend that imagery by the way, 10/10.

I could gush about this book for days but instead I’m just going to drop a couple memes the author made and link everywhere you can buy it. It’s out September 21, and I highly recommend this.

Indiebound

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

Waterstones

Indigo

Libro FM

Malice by Heather Walter

April 13, 2021 – 470 pages

For twenty years I’ve let this realm trample over my back. Keep me caged and controlled. But I am not a beast. Not a mongrel. I am Vila. My power will never Fade. And you’re about to feel every bit of it come down upon your heads.

Heather Walter

What good fucking soup.

Alyce is known as the Dark Grace, a half-Vila in a kingdom living through a royal curse placed on them by…. you guessed it, a Vila. She lives in a Grace house (think brothel but for fairies to do magical favors for paying customers) making elixirs for patrons who want cruel gifts for people they dislike. Alyce knows nothing of her race or magic until she meets two people: a mysterious cursed man named Kal and Aurora, the princess of Briar who wants desperately to end the curse that will claim her life in a year’s time if she doesn’t find her true love.

Every fairy tale could be improved upon with some good old fashioned sapphic romance, this is a fact. Alyce here felt less like Maleficent and more like a version of Elphaba, personally, but it still worked for me. I guess if you haven’t seen or read Wicked it wouldn’t feel that way at all so it’s just a comparison I couldn’t shake. I liked the spin on the fairies where they go from bickering cuties arguing over cake colors into being competitive cutthroat bitches with an axe to grind against Alyce’s back. Rose worked really well as a character, and I had so many complicated feelings about Laurel that I didn’t know what to do with them (much like how Alyce must have felt).

There is meaning to the Grace houses and their existence, and the theme isn’t lost on me. I appreciated the twist on magic in this world, this gift being something taken from those with it rather than given freely. The blood aspect was a literal personification of Walter’s point, and the addition of “fading” worked really well for me.

The atmosphere was incredibly dark and witchy, every scene feeling like a shadow was placed over each landscape I pictured. I loved the vibes, honestly, and I wish there were more books where the atmosphere had as much of a role as any of the characters did.

I would have liked more build up with Alyce and Aurora, but they do have a long period of time where they’re friends, and I think it works well to have Alyce latch on so quickly to someone who doesn’t immediately count her out. By the time they meet, we see plenty of people degrade and use Alyce, so her feelings make complete sense to me. Their relationship was sweet and unassuming, and even their disagreements felt sweeter than I’m used to, but it’s probably just because I’m gay and in love with Women. I think it would be beneficial to think of this more as a retelling of an origin story, rather than a sapphic romance first and foremost. Alyce’s origin is the main focus, and her relationship with Aurora plays into it greatly but is not the center.

I also think more time could have been spent on Alyce’s past to really hammer in how that’s affecting her choices and mindsets, but it wasn’t something lacking in the book really, just something that could have been emphasized in a few spots for more impact. The hatred she feels for Endlewild could have benefited from some more interactions.

I like this book mostly for the voice, honestly. Even spots where I would have liked improvements were fun to read because of how Alyce spoke to the reader – in a light level of self aware sarcasm that couldn’t help but be endearing. She wasn’t the smartest protagonist, but once she realized something she became a battering ram forward to her decision.

I don’t know, I don’t have much to say other than I liked this a LOT and I’m glad it’s a duology so I can read more and see where things go from that chaotic ending! Seriously- you know where things are supposed to go, but boy does the journey pick up momentum at the end.

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

352 pages – September 7, 2021 (re-release)

I don’t have anyone either, she thought. Perhaps that was why she’d let herself be swept into this. He hadn’t seduced her, not by far, but she’d been seduced anyway by the thoughts of comfort and companionship. Her family was gone, her home razed. She must scrub herself of her name, her identity, her very self. She had a need for an anchor, a friendly face.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This is my second book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia in the span of around a week, which is impressive considering I waited so long to read anything from her. One of my friends is obsessed with her books and that always makes me scared – I never want to read someone’s favorites and hate them so sometimes I just tuck them away in a corner until I can handle the pressure.

This is a re-release of a book that had gone out of print years ago – the success of Mexican Gothic has helped this live a second life, and the newer edition features a lot of cool bonuses at the end (including some cocktails that look delicious), so I highly recommend checking that out!

Certain Dark Things follows multiple POVs but centers around two key characters: Domingo, a street kid who makes his way by collecting valuables from trash around Mexico City and Atl, an Aztec vampire whose run from a rival vampire gang has led her to the one vampire-free city in the country, running for her life in the last place she’d ever be safe to live. They cling to each other with different needs and hopes for the partnership as danger closes in on them.

The author described this as a neo-noir book and I’ve never read anything like that. I’d say it felt fairly similar to The Coldest Girl in Coldtown with a cop-thriller twist, if that makes any sense. The cop and gang aspects of this are there but not too heavily woven in (a lot of Atl’s backstory hinges on gang dynamics but it’s mostly flashback) so if that doesn’t sound like your thing, you could still appreciate this for being a vampire noir book!

The best part of this book, in my opinion, is Moreno-Garcia’s skill at combating general perception of vampires with wide webs of cultural history. She’s able to weave different legends of vampires from all over the world and tuck them into this story, allowing for all of them to reside in this world with their own strengths and weaknesses. I loved the description of Atl’s subspecies, and I found revenants and necros sufficiently terrifying. Domingo was the perfect outsider for this story since he understood all of the underground aspects of crime but was hungry for knowledge about Atl and her kind, his eagerness feeding the reader with just the right doses of world-building at the right times.

I had a hard time liking Domingo at the beginning of the book, but I think that has a lot to do with Moreno-Garcia’s skill at writing a seventeen year old boy. He’s exactly like that, and it’s off-putting at times when he’s so forward with his, for lack of a better word, horniness, but he plays very realistically and was endearing to me by the time he began to grow on Atl.

Atl was a lovely character. Even seeing the book cover I pictured her with longer hair and darker skin, she felt like this dark goddess that just flew into Domingo’s life and wasn’t willing to take any shit. She thinks pragmatically at points, and entirely with emotion at others, and it’s a good blend for a character that so heavily outweighs the other POVs in power.

I found myself with really only one complaint as I closed in on the end of the book: the plot felt slow even though it really wasn’t – it follows a typical arc but the additional perspectives chop it up a little and make it feel like shorter scenes are a bit longer. It works overall, but at a couple moments I was wondering when the next big scene would be.

Overall, this doesn’t top Mexican Gothic for me, but it was a damn good read, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Moreno-Garcia’s catalogue. I’m thinking I’ll have more faves when they’re in genres I typically read and love, like Mexican Gothic was, but I must thank Moreno-Garcia for genre hopping so much so I have an easy excuse to try new things.

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

August 3, 2021 – 352 pages

Outside, there was a swarm of people who hated them. Under his feet, there was a darkness that crept into [his] bones. But for a moment, he wasn’t alone. The shadows were quiet.
Now that he knew what it felt like to be loved, he could never go back.

Courtney Gould

I received an ARC from Wednesday books in exchange for an honest review.

Content warnings – homophobia, child death, murder, claustrophobia, drowning, slurs

The Dead and the Dark follows the perspectives of two girls in Snakebite, Oregon: Ashley, a girl whose boyfriend has gone missing and Logan, the daughter of two television ghost hunters who have decided to return to Snakebite with her to research the area for their next season. As you read, the town’s history and players become puzzle pieces for the question everyone is asking: why are kids going missing and what does it have to do with Logan’s family?

This is a pretty standard book for me – I didn’t fall in love with anything but it kept my interest, flowed well, and delivered on everything it promised it would. If I was rating based on enjoyment alone, I think I’d settle more on three stars because I was hoping for more of a Courtney Summers punch in the throat at the climax, but I’ve bumped this up purely because this is Courtney Gould’s first book. The fact that it’s a debut makes a lot of the book’s strengths stand out, and it gives me hopes that I’ll like books from this author even more in the future.

YA mysteries that don’t center around high school students are surprisingly rare, and I appreciated that the POV characters in this are freshly graduated and on that precipice of going forward into “the real world” but halted by what’s happening in Snakebite. It adds to the tension for me when the characters are young but not separated from the adult scenarios of a murder investigation, and if all the seriousness of the plot was interrupted by homecoming details I think it would have ruined the book for me.

I liked Logan a lot – she’s blunt and a bit crass but she clearly cares about everyone around her and she has a reason for everything she says. She wants answers for herself at first, something to explain away the fear in her that everyone in the town is right about her dad. But as the book goes on you see her care about the entire picture, even as the answers swirl ever closer to coming from her home. Ashley needed time to grow on me – the sympathy I felt for her initially was easily erased by her mindset when Logan’s family comes to town and how complicit she was with her shitty friends being awful. I tend to get just as angry at characters who excuse bigotry as I would for the bigots themselves, so I would have liked a bit more growth there, or a scene where she rises against it (other than the obvious scene we have towards the end).

This is a queer book, like I mentioned above, and it plays out with some expected homophobia. There is a mention of a slur but the author chose to not have the word on the page, which I really appreciated. I’m not one to get too upset by word choice, but I respect the choice to keep people safe from that word even in a scene where it’s clear it was used.

The writing was very engaging – I found myself at 35% before I realized I’d been reading for almost an hour. It flew by and I read this in one evening, so I’d call it pretty fast paced. There are a lot of two week time jumps which help keep things flowing, all the unnecessary time was cut very efficiently. I realized pretty early on that I liked the writing style Gould was using, direct but not without metaphor. There aren’t a lot of memorable quotes from this book, but I feel like Gould has the potential to write some lines that could cut me deeply.

The dads and their show didn’t work for me, and while it’s a small part of the book (their direct interactions), it did make some parts a little less fun for me to read. It felt off the whole time, and I don’t know if that’s because of the intentional direction of the plot or because I just didn’t buy the characterization of them, particularly Brandon. I liked Garcia a lot, and I would have taken more time with her over the transcripts from the show. When I think about it, this probably is just a personal preference issue since I don’t like ghost hunting shows at all (an issue I also had with Schwab’s City of Ghosts), and I’ve watched plenty with my father in law so I think it’s just an annoyance of mine.

Mild spoilers below.

Onto the mystery. I figured it out pretty early on, but that’s not a demerit against the book – I do think the book tries to be leading with a pronoun usage when “the host” is mentioned, attempting to have the reader think of the likelihood of one outcome more than others, but it might have been more effective to avoid pronouns, since it just had me look for named characters other than the red herring character, and then it was obvious. Credit should be given for how the mystery played out, though, especially for a debut. The added aspects of Logan’s past and the real reasons for leaving Snakebite were great additions and well thought out (even if they require further suspension of disbelief than I thought I needed for this book).

All in all, I don’t know how memorable this book will be for me, but it was worth my time and I had no real complaints that aren’t easily written off by knowing this is Gould’s first book. I’m looking forward to reading whatever she comes up with next.

I recommend this if you need a quick spooky read to get you into the fall mood!

September TBR

I read less than half of the books I planned to read in August, abandoning my TBR the second my friends said “hey look here’s this romance that looks good.”

Have I, the gracious Janel of the Future, learned a lesson from Past Janel’s foolishness in August? Will I cater my TBR to allow for my mood reading and not trap me into books that I might suddenly find insurmountable?

Jury’s out, here’s what I want to read this month!

I like this TBR for a few reasons. 25% of these books are written by women of color, eleven out of 12 are written by women in general, and there are at least two books dealing with mental health. Add in that sprinkle of sapphic love with Written in the Stars and I feel like this might be one of my most balanced TBRs ever.

The real challenge will be in me actually reading these 12 books this month. My partner asks why I even bother with a TBR since I read based on mood so much, and I said to him “that’s part of the fun! I’m like my own mystery novel, what kind of reading plot twists will happen!”

I really want to read all of these books, not a single one of them was chosen just to continue a series I wasn’t enjoying or “hate” reading a book with a friend, so I think I can do it! Just need library loans to come in for a few of these babes and I’m ready to go.

Happy September!