astralbooks

[astralbooks]

A Tale of Seashells and Shenanigans - Alex Nonymous

Read: November 14th 2023 - November 16th 2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: disabled (chronic pain, cane user) ace non-binary main character, autistic aroace love interest, queer side characters, disabled (amputee) achillean side character

CW (listed in back of book): ableism, negative self talk about queerness, negative self talk about disability, non-malicious mispronouning, very brief mention of suicidal ideation, discussed transphobia, lashing out, autistic meltdown, gender dysphoria, discussed unsafe binding, swearing

Review:

Something Alex is incredibly skilled at, and this is something I’ve noticed across many of his books, is that she takes two characters whose initial opinions of each other are so terrible (and often for very good reasons) that I’m left wondering how on earth they could possibly get to a point where they can tolerate each other, let alone love each other, and then they show me the progression of the characters’ relationship, and does it so well that I’m left just completely convinced of it. Enemies-to-lovers (and variations thereupon) are so, SO hard to get right, and it’s so easy for the characters to go from A to B in what seems like an instant to the reader, but Alex Never Does This. The relationships in Alex’s books always, always feel earned, and this one is no exception.

Especially as the initial dislike Nico has for Tillie partly stems from totally justified outrage at being dragged on a quest and partly from them being Deeply Uncomfortable at the mirror Tillie is turning out to be. Watching Nico having to come to terms with the latter part of this while very gradually forgiving the former part of this was so fun!

I did not go into this expecting there to be a queer and/or disabled pirate crew captained by someone whose ex captains a rival pirate crew which occasionally gets into skirmishes with his own, but I was delighted by everything about that subplot.

As a genderqueer person who goes by a shortened version of their og name among friends and online but still uses their longer og name in professional settings and with coworkers, Yeah. I think this is the first time I’ve come across a non-binary character with this relationship to their og name. Some people have deadnames, and some people have Formal names, and it was neat to see a depiction of the latter!

I cannot emphasise enough how healing the core relationship of this book was to read about. As Nico grows to like Tillie and enjoy spending time with her, they develop a crush on Tillie. Tillie, as it turns out, is aroace, and so cannot reciprocate Nico’s romantic feelings. Since I started reviewing books I have read two separate books in which the main character falls for someone who’s aro, gets cruelly rejected as a result, and it’s this big deal that hugely impacts the book and even becomes the tragic-backstory emotional crux of the story, because how dare the aro person be aro??? Alex looked at that situation and went: No thanks! If you care about someone, you’re not gonna be cruel when telling them you don’t reciprocate their feelings, whether you're aro or not. If you care about someone, you’re not gonna act like them not reciprocating your feelings is some great tragedy, whether they’re aro or not. Nico and Tillie care about each other. Maybe it’s the arospec in me, but even if you do feel romantically attracted to someone, it’s seriously not the end of the world if you never do anything about it. You can still enjoy having those feelings while also getting to have that person in your life as your friend! Speaking from experience here, I promise it’ll be okay! This book is a love story, but not a romantic one, and while Nico says at one point they think they might have bit of a crush on Tillie forever, the relationship between Nico and Tillie is not a romantic one because Tillie is aroace and that is respected and guess what!!! The world didn’t end!!!!!

The sea having a concept of the economy and refusing to do anything to disrupt it is very funny to me for some reason kjdhsfkg

Also Alex if you ever do want to write a follow up about the other members of The House, 👀

[astralbooks]

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me - Jamison Shea

Read: 09/08/2023 - 18/08/2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: Black bi main character, brown love interest, Black side character, East Asian side character, Black minor characters, Japanese minor character, sapphic minor character

CW (listed in book): depictions of blood, ritualistic self-harm. bones and corpses, body horror, an instance of body shaming relating to ballet, non-graphic torture, murder, classism, racism, referenced parental neglect & abandonment

Review:

Laure is in her final year at the ballet academy in Paris. She consistently ranks as the top performer in her cohort, but is shunned by the majority of her peers and told to her face by board members of the Paris Ballet Company that her Blackness means she wouldn’t be a good fit. As auditions for a spot as an apprentice in the company approach, a chance encounter leads Laure to an underground river of blood and the chance to make a deal. Laure’s new power unlocks a darkness inside of her that she doesn’t dislike, but when other people who’ve made deals start showing up dead, the monster within might be the only thing that can save her.

Have you ever put so much energy and effort into something, only to realise that nobody’s ever going to recognise any of it? Have you ever burnt yourself out trying to meet the ridiculous expectations being placed on you? Have you ever been so angry about this that you wished you could just destroy it all? If yes, this book is probably going to resonate with you.

I found Laure to be a fascinating character and I really enjoyed reading from her perspective, but she has the potential to be divisive. She’s determined, she’s ruthless, and she’s at times blatantly unreliable, telling the reader one thing while certain events point to the situation being at least somewhat different to her perception of it. When she hurts people she doesn’t waste time or energy regretting it. To be clear, I loved her! If you support women’s wrongs then you’ll probably love her too, but people who prefer their stories and protagonists to be clear cut good guys are probably not going to get along with this book as much. Shea has described this book as a villain origin story and that description is absolutely correct.

This is a horror novel, but it isn’t strictly the fantasy elements that make it so. The cutthroat world of ballet, the ways in which it’s institutionally interwoven with classism and white supremacy, and the lengths people will go to uphold all of these things, contribute more to the horror than the existence of the deals themselves. The deals the characters make do result in them getting more than they’d bargained for, and this alone would’ve been enough for an interesting story, but this isn’t the direction in which this story goes. Instead we get a sharp critique of the ways in which established institutions, such as the Paris Ballet, are designed to favour those who look a certain way (white) and who come from a certain background (wealthy), and an examination of just how unreasonable the expectations for those who can’t meet its ridiculously high standards are. It’s discrimination and desperation that drives Laure to make her deal in the first place. It’s white entitlement that leads to every horrific death in the book.

I also really enjoyed the romance subplot! The relationship between Laure and Andor was such a slow burn that I didn’t realise it was happening for a decently long time, but I was loving the growing friendship and closeness between them long before it took a romantic turn. Their dynamic as a couple is definitely a fun one. Get yourself a man who will literally worship you.

I would recommend this to those with an interest in performing arts and how those industries can treat the people within them, to those who like stories with complicated narrators who aren’t necessarily the quote unquote ‘hero’, to those who like stories exploring the fallout of a deal with an entity with unknowable intentions, and to anyone looking for more horror centering a Black protagonist and stemming from how that protagonist proceeds when faced with racist institutions that would rather see them gone.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

[astralbooks]

Clementine and Danny Save the World (and Each Other) by Livia Blackburne

Read: 23/06/2023

Rating : 4/5

Rep: Chinese American main characters, Chinese & Chinese American side characters, Black Nigerian side character

CW: racism, death of a side character

Danny and Clementine’s anonymous online personas have been feuding for years on Clementine’s tea review blog, with each having no idea about the other’s real identity. When rumours start flying about the Chinatown strip mall where Danny’s family’s teahouse is located being bought up by a big corporation, Danny and Clementine team up with a local activist group to try and stop the sale from happening. 

This is a rom-com, and a lot of the ‘com’ comes from Danny’s narration. He’s full of quips and funny thoughts, and reading from his perspective often put a smile on my face. He’s the relatable, introverted, terrified-of-public-speaking one and I really felt for him as he realised he may have bitten off a little more than he’d like to chew. I also enjoyed reading Clementine’s chapters! She’s a friendly and confident girl who cares deeply about the community around her, who isn’t afraid to get up and do something about a situation she thinks is unjust. She knows what she wants in life and isn’t willing to sit around and wait for it, she’s going to march outside and go to it.

I wasn’t super convinced that they were falling in love with each other, but I was convinced that they did very much enjoy each other’s company. I’m choosing to see that as a win. Their relationship is built on them genuinely getting along and actually liking each other as people, so even if the romance aspect didn’t quite hit for me I still enjoyed reading about them!

If Danny were to write an AITA post about his online actions then the response he’d get would be a resounding YTA. He’s not a bad person by any means, which is shown by the genuine horror he feels when certain things come to light. There’s a lesson to be learned from this book and it’s to treat the people you come across online with respect, and that if there’s someone you don’t like for whatever reason then you’re better off ignoring them and/or blocking them than the vast majority of the alternatives. It just saves so much grief.

In all, this is an enjoyable read! I easily read the whole book in just one day. If you’re looking for a new rom-com, a book involving activism, or a book that celebrates Chinese American culture, and especially tea, then I’d recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to HarperCollins for sending me an arc in return for an honest review.

[astralbooks]

Immortal Longings - Chloe Gong

Read: 04/06/2023 - 09/06/2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: Chinese coded setting and cast, side f/f relationship, implied achillean side character

CW: violence, blood, on-page death & murder, suicidal thoughts & intention, poverty, kidnapping, hospitals, consent issues

Review:

Each year, the twin cities of San-Er hold a game. Eighty eight competitors fight to the death, with the winner being granted riches and the option of leaving the city for a quiet life elsewhere, something which nobody else is allowed to do. When Calla enters the game she’s determined to win, though not because she wants or needs the money. She’s a princess in hiding who’s been in exile since she killed her parents five years ago, and being the victor is the only way she can get face to face with the king, her uncle, so she can finish the job. 

This book isn’t slow paced, but is deceptively slower paced than you’d probably expect, with a decent chunk of the word count being dedicated to descriptions of the cities that paint a clear and detailed picture of what San-Er looks like and what it’s like to live there. This is a stylistic choice that isn’t going to be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it! Gong managed not to lose my interest at any point, even during the passages where less was actively happening, and by the end of the book I had a really strong understanding and image of the city in my mind.

I loved Calla! She’s the sort of anti-hero who desperately wants the world to be a better place and is prepared to do whatever it takes to make it so, even if that means burning everything down and hurting innocent people along the way. She’s not happy about participating in the king’s games and she doesn’t revel in killing all these people but that doesn’t mean she won’t do it with brutal efficiency. She doesn’t waste time feeling guilty about any of it. Those people need to die so she can achieve her goal, that’s all there is to it, and she’s confident in her ability to get the job done to the point of arrogance. It was interesting to see the ways in which her priorities shift – and don’t shift – as she gets closer than anticipated to Anton, another participant in the game.

I didn’t find the romance between Calla and Anton entirely convincing, which weirdly I thought suited the story well. Their relationship isn’t healthy and in the situation they’re in it would be almost impossible for it to be. They both have their own reasons for entering the game that means losing isn’t an option for either of them, and unless one of them pulls out of the game one of them has to die. They both know this from the start. They both know they aren’t planning on backing down. The third most significant pov character points out in text that Calla and Anton’s relationship can’t possibly be genuine love after so short a time. Just because a character believes something doesn’t mean they’re correct, and this book is a prime example of that. I believe that they believe they’re in love which is arguably the more important point. If you’re looking for a heartwarming love story this isn’t the book for you.

The magic system is centred around people’s ability to ‘jump’ from body to body, basically possessing other people. No more than two people can occupy a body at any one time, if someone possesses someone for long enough then the original person will fade away and effectively die, and the only way to tell who’s piloting a vessel at any given time is by looking at their eyes as those are intrinsic to the person and their qi, and not to the vessel. I thought this was a really cool detail!

Jumping is so normalised in this society that it’s stated that many people don’t stay in the body they’re born in, with Anton spending the entire book hopping from vessel to vessel without giving the people whose bodies he’s taking much thought. It also leads to there being a lot of collateral damage in the game, because if a player is killed then so is anyone else who happens to be in that vessel at that time. It’s established that people who’ve been jumped into are completely unaware of anything that happens during this time but that they still have to deal with the physical consequences of whatever was done while they were possessed. There are some inherent consent issues here. Someone who’s being possessed can’t consent to anything the person possessing them might decide to do with their body. Your mileage may vary on how much this bothers you. 

This is getting a lot of comparisons to The Hunger Games, and it’s completely understandable why, but Squid Game is possibly a closer comp. Unlike in The Hunger Games, the people participating in King Kasa’s game have all volunteered to be there and are technically able to withdraw at any time, but the vast majority of them are facing financial situations such that they’re effectively facing death either way so almost nobody ever does. Just like in both these comps, the societal critique is both blatant and sadly needed.

I sometimes find myself wishing I didn’t read an arc of a book for the very simple reason that I’m now faced with even longer to wait until the next book in the series than most people are going to have. The way this book ends is such that I desperately want to know what happens next, both the bigger picture and also the next thing that gets said in that room. But I have to wait! Oh well, Chloe Gong hasn’t disappointed me so far, so I’m sure the wait will be worth it.

If you like retellings, battle royales and the societal commentary that tends to accompany them, a magic system based on possession, or the concept of cyberpunk-but-make-it-dial-up, then I recommend checking this one out!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review.

[astralbooks]

City of Vicious Night (Requiem Dark #2) - Claire Winn

Read: 24/05/2023 - 25/05/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: bi main characters, f/f relationship, biracial Japanese-Portuguese main character & side character, chronically ill main character, disabled main character with a prosthetic arm and eye, gay South Asian side character, disabled gay Latino side character with a prosthetic arm, side m/m relationship, aromantic side character, non-binary side characters

CW (provided in front of book): violence, blood, mild gore, death (on-page and past), gun violence, strong language, sexual content (including non-graphic encounters), human experimentation, use of medical needles, alcohol misuse, fictional drug use, terminal illness, suicidal ideation & threatened suicide, mild torture, loss of limbs, vomiting, referenced poverty, referenced prostitution & sexual assault (not involving main characters)

Review:

Four months after runaway heiress Asa managed to get her sister’s consciousness placed back inside her body, the two of them are firmly established members of Riven’s crew. When a hacker starts telling the people of city-moon Requiem that they were the ones responsible for the chaos from around then, and starts trying very hard to kill them, the crew decide that their best option for survival is to have Riven become the new matriarch of one of the Requiem’s five factions, as matriarchs are nigh-untouchable. To do that they’ll need to succeed at a series of trials, and deal with new opponents, all while still fending off the murderous hacker and uncovering a conspiracy involving Asa’s father with horrifying implications for all of Requiem.

I came away from the first book wanting the girls to be friends rather than girlfriends, which feels deeply weird to me as a queer person who’s used to thinking the complete opposite. The four month time skip means that the majority of development between Asa and Riven happened off-screen between books. If you take their feelings for each other as a given then this book works. I didn’t finish this one thinking they should just be friends. I would’ve much preferred it if we actually got to see them get from A to B, though, especially considering how little focus their relationship in any capacity got in the first book. We could’ve gotten a slow burn out of this, and Riven’s tendency for self-sabotage could’ve remained intact in that version of the story, but instead we got none of the development and barely any of the payoff because having a strong established relationship for most of the book is also apparently too much to ask for.

When I read the first book, I was neutral on Riven. There were times when I liked her and there were times when I really didn’t like her. This, unfortunately, did not change in this book. She’s for some reason taken it upon herself to protect poor innocent little Asa who clearly can’t handle herself in any situation at all, but then she constantly makes reckless decisions that puts everyone in even more danger than they were in before. Riven’s view of herself as a protector and view of Asa (and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the crew) as someone who she specifically must protect is just not true to reality, and this is something that never quite clicks in her head through the whole book. I think this is the source of my issues with her. Asa can handle herself and Riven’s assumption otherwise came off as condescending. Leroy Jenkins’ing your way through life doesn’t just put you in danger, but the people around you as well. It’s hypocritical, and therefore irritating.

Why four stars, then? Well, there is still a lot about this book that I did enjoy!

Riven was a lot more bearable in the final act! She hadn’t fully understood what she’d been doing wrong, but she did refrain from doing any of it again, and I can take a win when I get one.

I loved every other member of the crew! Asa is just as fab in this book as in the first. She’s more used to Requiem and more secure in her life and identity away from her father, now firmly a part of the crew and an indispensable part of it. Samir and Diego were just as great in this book as they were in the first, and I enjoyed getting to learn more about Diego’s past and reasons for being here. Asa’s sister, Kaya, was a highlight for me from the first book despite not actually being in it very much, so I was really happy to see her playing a much larger part in this book. She’s so fun! Her consciousness having been transferred to an alien brain means she’s now effectively a technomancer, and seeing her put those skills to use was really cool. The upcoming novella is going to be featuring her as a main character and I’m genuinely really excited for it!

And then there’s Ty! Ty gets his own pov in this book, and I love him. He’s the team healer and he really embodies that. It was great seeing the contrast between characters who have no problem with killing people, and Ty who wants to save as many people as possible even if it’s maybe not the most efficient approach to a problem. Ty has never killed anyone before, and a big part of his arc is about reckoning with that. He goes from being scared at the thought of hurting someone to being entirely prepared to do so but choosing to be merciful anyway, and I loved that.

Two characters having a psychic link where they can directly communicate with one another and even hear each other’s thoughts is a trope I really enjoy, especially when it leads to the characters becoming closer with each other.

I enjoyed the competition aspect of the plot! However, I wouldn’t describe this entirely as a ‘competition book’, because it takes up a much smaller part of the story than is probably expected. Things go off the rails very quickly thanks to two opposing antagonistic forces. There’s Luca Almeida, Asa and Kaya’s father and the one responsible for a host of suffering and death, and there’s Redline, a hacker saboteur who holds Asa responsible for her father’s factions and is trying to exact revenge on her. There are a lot of questions surrounding Redline, and not all of them are answered by the end, which isn’t a bad thing. It leaves room for there to potentially be more set in this universe.

So many books have their big climactic moment and then just end right away, as if once the confrontation has happened and the big bad has been dealt with there’s nothing of value anymore so it might as well not continue. This book didn’t do that!! The final chapters are a proper denouement, where the characters now finally have a chance to recover and breathe and be okay. Winning the battle isn’t all there is and I really appreciated that we got to see some of what comes after!

This is in all a fun cyberpunk duology that I’m happy to recommend to people looking for something fast paced and cinematic. 

Thank you to NetGalley and North Star Editions for providing me with an e-arc of this book, and to TBR and Beyond Tours for having me on this tour! You can find the full tour schedule here and the rest of my tour stop (there's a playlist!) here

[astralbooks]

Court of the Undying Seasons by A.M. Strickland

Read: 11/05/2023 - 17/05/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: pan demigirl main character, pan love interest, Black lesbian side character, bigender side character, agender side character, queer side characters including pan & aroace characters

CW (provided by author): blood drinking (voluntary & forced), violence, gore, death & murder, child abuse, child neglect, mind/body control, consent issues, uneven relationship dynamics, death of a queer character (but most characters are queer), death of a parent (off page), death of a mentor, substance use (alcohol, mushrooms, vampire blood), mild gender dysphoria, mild body horror

Review:

When vampires come to Fin’s village to choose someone to turn into one of them, Fin makes sure she’s the one who gets chosen. This way she can make sure the girl she’s secretly in love with will be safe, and she can use this as an opportunity to learn how to kill vampires so she can avenge her mother. She’s taken to a vampire finishing school where, as she’s slowly turned into one of the undead, she must learn different vampiric skills to a high enough standard to be accepted. Failure means death or becoming a human thrall, neither of which are an option. Things get complicated, however, when people start getting murdered, and the deaths all seem to have some connection to Fin.

I liked Fin as a main character! She was reckless enough to be willing to do things that drove the plot forwards, but still reasonable enough not to verge into ridiculousness. Except for this one incident when she was so determined to yell at someone that she refused to let a likely fatal injury be healed for a lot longer than was reasonable. She was just clutching at her still-bleeding wound as she shouted and honestly I was so entertained by this that I don’t even care how unrealistic it was. Sometimes the need to chew someone out is simply bigger than whatever crisis is unfolding no matter what it is and I think that’s a feeling we can all relate to on some level.

I found the relationship between Fin and Gavron to be believable, and I enjoyed watching them gradually come to trust each other and see each other as an ally. Also, they’re Very Into mutual blood drinking, more so than is apparently typical for vampires in-universe. I thought this was a very fun aspect of their relationship to read about, but it might not be for everyone, even for a book about vampires. If detailed descriptions of blood drinking are going to bother you then this isn’t the book for you. If you’re down with that then full steam ahead.

I think the consent issues inherent in this premise were handled well! Gavron is Fin’s vampire maker, or sire, to borrow terminology I’ve seen used in other vampire media, and this inherently means he has some power over her due to him being in that position of authority. There’s also a significant plot thread regarding the vampiric ability to control the actions of humans. If left unaddressed, all of this would have serious and troubling implications. Thankfully, it wasn’t left unaddressed. The ability to consent (in both sexual and non-sexual contexts) is a point of discussion, and Gavron and Fin place heavy emphasis on being equal partners in their relationship. They could’ve easily been super codependent and toxic, but they very deliberately weren’t, and I appreciated that.

I loved some of the side characters in this book! Especially Jaen and Kashire. Jaen is a bigender scholar, who’s largely kind and compassionate, but who’ll show no mercy to those who cross him or hurt his friends. She gets the book’s sole f-bomb and it’s glorious. Jaen’s the character I’d most like to be friends with out of everyone and the person I think I’d get along with the most. Kashire is a lot of fun. He’s Gavron’s ex, and is introduced to Fin in such a way that she takes an instant and very understandable dislike to him, but as time goes on he grows on her despite how much she wishes he wouldn’t. They’re totally besties by the end. Besties who still pretend to hate each other half the time. 

If you’re looking for a morally grey world with morally grey characters, a vampire book that doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of such a story, and a casually queer cast, then you’ll probably enjoy this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

[astralbooks]

Transmogrify! edited by g. haron davis

Read: 22/04/2023 - 27/04/2023

Rating: 3/5

Rep: trans protagonists (mainly non-binary)

CW: transphobia, misgendering, fantasy violence, body horror, discussion of suicide, deaths of family members

Review:

This is an anthology of fourteen short stories by transgender authors about transgender characters that involve magic in some way!

As is the case with pretty much any anthology you come across, some of the stories in here were better than others. My personal favourites were Mason Deaver’s Genderella, a mostly contemporary retelling of Cinderella featuring a trans girl teenager as the protagonist, Cam Montgomery’s Bend The Truth, Break It Too, featuring a cursed non-binary shopkeeper who cannot leave their shop and is constantly having to fight off possession, and Dove Salvatierra’s Espejismos, about a Latinx person in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic world who’s struggling to both survive in his family home and to reckon with his late father’s expectations of him.

A lot of these stories felt samey, though. You’d think with the freedom to write anything so long as the main characters are trans and there’s magic involved there’d be a little more variety, but no. A lot of these stories are set in a world where women do magic type A and men do magic type B and our brave non-binary protagonist has to argue their case to be allowed to do magic A/B/A+B/C (delete as applicable) and it got a bit tiring after a while. One story with this plot would’ve been enough. The point of an anthology is to have lots of different stories along a similar theme (in this case, transness and magic as a whole) but this started to feel like the same story again and again with different set dressings, and as a non-binary reader frankly it got depressing very quickly. I was hoping for a little more trans magic and not as much transphobia.

If a story wasn’t about a non-binary kid having to fight to be allowed to participate in things, then it was probably about a magic school in some capacity. I do understand why contributors wanted to write about magic schools. A story involving a magic school that centres transgender characters is something of a targeted screw you at a certain once beloved children’s author. But, again, there were a lot of stories involving a magic school, and the only one that seemed to have anything interesting to say was the one told from the perspective of the school itself, which, I’ve now double checked, is the one written by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, and their ability to do something actually interesting is likely unsurprising.

There were very few transfem characters throughout this anthology. Out of fourteen stories, a grand total of only one features a trans girl main character. There’s another with a trans girl love interest, but she’s not the protagonist. Unless I’ve missed something major, that’s it. The overwhelming majority of protagonists in this anthology are non-binary, there are a couple of trans boys, and there is a single trans girl. This is an issue! I’m non-binary. I recognise that non-binary characters are underrepresented. But trans women are also underrepresented, if not more so, and them being so noticeably absent from this anthology is not a great look. This anthology is claiming to depict a wide range of trans experiences. If that’s really the case, you’d expect there to be more trans girls than there are.

This anthology has come under fire recently for not having any trans women or transfem contributors. It’s true that demanding people be entirely open about any queer identities they may align with isn’t a good thing to be doing. Nobody should be forced out of the closet and in many cases it can be genuinely unsafe for people to come out. However, every single contributing author is already openly transgender in some way, making this something of a flimsy defence in this case. To put it charitably, not making sure to include at least one openly transfem contributor to this trans anthology was a mistake, and it’s one that I hope won’t be made again.

In all, this anthology was fine. I liked some stories more than I liked others, which is typical for anthologies! But its claim to include a diverse range of trans experiences when it very plainly does not sours my feelings on it by a lot. In isolation, I wouldn’t even mind the majority of the stories being about non-binary characters provided there were also multiple stories about other varieties of transness, but there aren’t. The lack of stories about trans girls, and the last of transfem contributors, are glaring omissions that are probably indicative of wider issues in the publishing industry as a whole.

Thank you to HarperTeen for sending me an arc in return for an honest review.

[astralbooks]

If Tomorrow Doesn't Come by Jen St. Jude

Read: 20/04/2023 - 21/04/2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: lesbian main character with clinical depression, biracial (Mexican & Indian) lesbian love interest, f/f relationship, ace Nigerian Muslim side character, gay Latino side character

CW: depiction of clinical depression, suicidal thoughts & near attempt, past suicide of a family member, strong theme of impending death, homophobia based in religion including from parents and authority figures, home invasion, gun usage, referenced violence & murder, underage drinking

Review:

Avery is moments away from drowning herself when she’s interrupted by the sound of alarms and a phone call from her best friend telling her about the asteroid that’s headed for Earth. They have nine days until it hits the planet and there’s nothing that anybody can do to stop it. With the knowledge that the world is ending in less than two weeks, Avery abandons her suicide attempt, instead going home to be with her family and best friend who she’s secretly in love with.

I felt this book deep in my soul. It technically took me two days to read this, but that’s only because I made the mistake of reading the first chapter just before I had to go to bed. All my plans for the next day were thrown out of the window as I read all of this instead. It sucked me in and tore up my heart and then I was finished and somehow had to cope with that. I’m not someone who usually remembers their dreams, but this book invaded my dreams the night after I read it and I woke up confused about which reality I was living in. Even now the dream hasn’t entirely faded from my memory. This book has left a deep impression on me and I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time. I’m definitely planning on keeping up with anything St. Jude releases going forwards, because if this is their debut then we simply aren’t ready for what they’re going to do next.

In many stories of humanity at the end of the world, people are shown to be at their worst. They’re shown to prioritise their own survival over everybody else’s and they don’t care who they hurt so long as they themselves are okay. And there are people like that in this book, but they’re not the people we spend the most time with. The core cast of characters go in the complete opposite direction and instead we see humanity at its best. We see people helping out strangers and acquaintances without asking for anything in return, simply because it’s the right thing to do. We see people who love each other, deeply and fiercely, who come together and work together to try to survive, or to at least enjoy the time they have left with each other. Even when time is running out there is still room for joy and this book captured that so well.

Avery, the main character, is going to stick with me. The knowledge that everyone is going to be dead or left in a position where survival isn’t likely in nine days doesn’t make her depression go away, but over the course of the book she starts to see beauty in the world again. It’s nothing short of tragic that it wasn’t until the world was ending that she began to want to live. She grows so much over the course of the book and her thoughts over the last few pages filled me with hope and just a little despair. I love her and I want good things for her.

This book jumps around in time, with chapters alternating between the present day, with its countdown to the end, and significant events in Avery’s life before. These two different timelines being presented concurrently might not suit everybody but it really suited me, and when each chapter takes place is clearly labelled so it isn’t confusing. 

The romance was lovely! It hit all the right notes, with them coming together at what I felt were the perfect points in the book. I especially appreciated the direction their relationship took nearer the end. It’s difficult to talk about it without spoiling it, but I liked that even though their time together was running out they both still made their own choices, and they didn’t hold anything against each other.

I’m going to fistfight Avery’s parents and one of her professors. Less so the parents, because even if it did take the end of the world for them to realise that their approach to certain things hadn’t been great, they did get there and they did apologise. Avery’s professor, however, never seems to grasp what he did wrong. But even when faced with the end of the world not everyone is going to properly reflect or apologise to the people they’ve hurt. It made sense that this guy didn’t. If anything, it’s yet another point in this book’s favour that this relatively minor side character has managed to get such a strong reaction out of me! I’m still gonna fight him though. 

This book is a new favourite for sure. If you can handle stories with strong themes of suicide and impending death then I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Thank you to Penguin Books for sending this arc out, and also to the random stranger who donated it allowing me to get my hands on it!

[astralbooks]

I Like Me Better - Robby Weber

Read: 18/04/2023 - 20/04/2023

Rating: 3/5

Rep: gay main character, achillean love interest, m/m relationship, biracial Korean-American side character

CW: divorce (in backstory), brief drug use, animal attack (not involving main character), hospitals

Review:

It’s the summer just before star soccer player Zack’s senior year and he’s looking forward to spending it in training and with his friends. However, when the out-going captain of the team goes too far with a prank, Zack decides to take the fall for him in an effort to stay in his good graces so he’ll hopefully make Zack the next team captain, which lands him in community service for the summer. It’s not all bad, though, as there’s this really cute intern there who he’s gradually getting to know. The only problem is that he thinks Zack really did the thing that landed him in community service in the first place, and he’s not impressed.

This was a fun and fairly quick read! The romance was relatively lighthearted, with the characters genuinely liking each other as people throughout, which I enjoyed. There was also a running theme of the struggles of living up to other people’s expectations, how difficult this can be, and how it sometimes isn’t worth the effort. Zack starts off the book doing all he can to make Ryan, the current captain of the soccer team, like him and approve of him, and as the book goes on Zack comes to realise that this isn��t such a good thing to be doing to himself or to the people he cares about.

Speaking of Zack, I liked him well enough as a protagonist, though I did think he was a bit clueless at times. He’s very trusting and not at all cynical, so when Ryan assures him that he’ll own up to the prank when the time is right, Zack believes him and continues believing him for a long time. Definitely for longer than is reasonable. Zack taking the blame for Ryan in the first place was very sweet and very unnecessary. I wouldn’t have made the same decision in Zack’s place, though I completely understand why he thought he needed to make it.

I really liked Chip, the love interest. He’s also facing expectations to be a certain way, but unlike Zack he’s determined right from the start to do his own thing. His enthusiasm for the environment and marine wildlife was really great, and his nerves when faced with presenting his thoughts outside of a casual conversation despite the strength of his knowledge were deeply relatable. 

Meyers, one of Zack’s best friends, is a delight, and is also the kind of person who, when they get into a ridiculous situation, you’re not surprised in the slightest. I have a friend just like that. 

Something that was really obvious to me as I was reading was when this book is set. I’m not referring to it being set in the summer, because obviously it’s set in the summer, but that it’s specifically set in the summer of 2023. This book uses a lot of very current slang (and sometimes even text-specific slang that people don’t tend to use offline) in both dialogue and narration as well as having a lot of very specific-to-now pop culture references. This is something that many contemporaries avoid, giving them a slightly looser setting in time so they still feel as if they’re set in roughly the present day for longer, until there are significant shifts in real-life technology or cultural norms. It’s inescapable that this book is set in 2023 and it’s possible that it will come to feel outdated very quickly. There is such a thing as an unintentional period piece, and this book feels like one waiting to happen.

Something I really liked was how Zack being gay was completely accepted by everybody to the point that it wasn’t even a question or a discussion. He just... is, and there’s no drama or discrimination about it. Books including depictions of coming out or homophobia have every right to exist and I very often enjoy those too, but it’s also nice to get to read a romance novel that does away with all of that. This book depicts a version of our reality where being queer is universally accepted and respected without comment. If only the real world was more like the one shown here.

In all, this was a quick and enjoyable read, ideal for people who like sports books, summer romances, and discussions about the environmental impact humanity has when they don’t actively try to be careful about their actions.

Thank you to HarperCollins for sending me an arc in return for an honest review!

[astralbooks]

Bitterthorn - Kat Dunn

Read: 07/04/2023 - 08/04/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: sapphic main character & love interest, f/f relationship

CW: death of a parent (in backstory), grief, self harm, suicidal thoughts & suicide attempt, fire & fire related injuries, emotional abuse & neglect, murder, on page death, corpses & bones, emesis

Review:

The town of Blumwald is cursed. Every 50 years they are visited by the Witch, who takes a young man back to her castle as her companion who’s never seen again. Mina, the daughter of the Duke of Blumwald, is grieving, lonely, and out of place in a family that seems to have no space for her. So, when the Witch arrives to take her new companion, Mina volunteers herself.

This book can be best described as a dark gothic fairytale. There are recognisable elements of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty in here that have all been blended together to make a story that isn’t quite a retelling of any one story but is right at home alongside them.

The overarching themes of this book are grief and loneliness. Mina is a deeply lonely person, even at the book’s start. Her parents never had much time for her when she was a child, and since her father remarried after her mother’s death she’s been practically pushed out of her family even more by her stepmother and stepsister. As the book went on I found myself disliking all three of Mina’s parents more and more, and Mina’s actions and thought processes are entirely unsurprising when considering the environment in which she grew up. She knows, logically, that the way she's being treated isn’t right, but she can’t help but love them anyway and hold out hope that one day their attitudes towards her will improve. Her arc is one that will surely resonate with those who grew up with similarly emotionally neglectful parents.

A lot of this book was written during the 2020 lockdowns, while Dunn was living alone, and that sense of loneliness and isolation really does come through here. This isn’t about the pandemic itself at all, there isn’t a virus involved, but I think that the way Dunn took the loneliness caused by the pandemic, as well as the way that time began to feel strange during this period, and seamlessly planted these concepts into a new context worked really well!

The Witch was an interesting character. She’s a mysterious figure, who refuses to answer most of Mina’s questions for a very long time and does all she can to keep Mina at a distance, often turning to cruelty in order to do so. As we learned more about her I came to understand her and the tragedy of her story more, and I really did feel for her, but I was still struggling to actually like her and her relationship with Mina. The main barrier to this, for me, being her cruelty. 

For all this book examines how if your parents don’t care very much about you or your wellbeing then you have no obligation to stick with them, it doesn’t seem to consider how if your partner is treating you badly then you also have no obligation to stick with them. Mina is constantly nice to the Witch, nicer than I’m sure most would be if they were in her situation, and yet is also constantly put in a position where she feels she has to apologise to the Witch when she’s either done nothing wrong or what she’s done wrong pales in comparison to what the Witch is putting her through. There’s only one point in which I think Mina’s apology is genuinely needed, and that situation worked out for the best anyway, so. I like where the two of them are at by the very end of the book, I like the way their relationship looks like it’s going to be as they go forward into the future, but throughout the book itself I couldn’t get super invested in it because the Witch was simply treating Mina badly. Mina chose the Witch lashing out at her over her family’s disregard of her. Picking neither may have been a better option.

I really liked what turned out to be the truth of the situation! I can’t go into much detail about it due to plot spoilers, but I thought it was all really cool. I figured out the most heartbreaking piece of the puzzle ahead of Mina discovering it for herself, but I don’t mind a little bit of predictability. I suspect the dramatic irony was intentional in this case anyway.

If you like dark fairytales or explorations of loneliness and neglect and the impact this can have on people, then I recommend picking this one up! Just mind the content warnings, as they are serious.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andersen Press for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review!

[astralbooks]

Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Read: 23/03/2023 - 25/03/2023

Rating: 3/5

Rep: Latinx coded setting and cast, lesbian main character, sapphic love interest, f/f relationship

CW: drug use & addiction, child abandonment, child abuse & neglect, threat of sexual assault from an authority figure, on page death, death of a parent (in backstory), fantasy violence, kidnapping, imprisonment, possession, very brief reference to suicide

Review:

Lucha lives in a town on the edge of the Bosque de la Noche, the Night Forest, taking contracts to hunt the monsters within in order to make ends meet for her and her younger sister whenever their mother fails to come home. When Lucha discovers a magical power within herself, she makes a desperate deal with a mysterious figure only she can see, grabs her sister Lis, and flees into the forest along with a girl who worships a goddess who, according to forbidden myth, opposes the figure that Lucha’s deal is with. As Lucha sets about fulfilling her end of the bargain she gradually comes to understand what exactly she’s gotten herself into, and has to decide how far she’ll go to save the forest and the rest of the world.

A lot of this book is set either in or near the forest, and it was a really cool setting! Lucha’s abilities mean she can effectively communicate with the forest and all that resides within it. Whether the forest is willing to listen to her is another matter entirely, and her control over her abilities and the stability of the link between herself and the forest is something that Lucha struggles with throughout the book.

Something I thought was really interesting about this book was the exploration of the fallout of having been failed by a parent. Lucha and Lis’ mother isn’t there for them, succumbing to addiction instead, meaning Lucha has to take responsibility for her and Lis’ well-being from a very young age and directly leading into the book’s inciting incident. If their mother had been there for them, they wouldn’t have needed to flee. Lucha is angry at her mother for all of this, which is understandable. However as the book goes on she comes to understand her mother’s actions a lot more. I liked how Lucha’s perspective on the situation develops, and I liked that this doesn’t end up swinging to the other extreme and being a case of the abused child forgiving their parent simply because they’re their parent. Nuance!

A key theme of this book is the outright rejection of fate and destiny. Lucha could be seen as a chosen one, but it’s strongly established that she’s a chosen one because she chooses to step up. She could choose not to. She has that option. She’s not the only hope the world will ever have, there will be others with her ability and she could leave the situation for them to resolve when their time comes. I thought this was an interesting take on the chosen one trope that I’m sure people will enjoy!

I liked the note the romantic relationship between Lucha and Pax was left on, but I can see why others might not like it as much. If you like your books to finish with a neat bow and a happily ever after then this one’s more open ending might not be for you.

Considering how important the relationship between Lucha and Lis is supposed to be, and how much of the story hinges on it, I would’ve liked to actually see more of it. The biggest interaction we see between the girls before things kick off in earnest is a fight, and then due to plot reasons they don’t ever get to just exist and interact with each other as they naturally would. I think their bond would’ve been more believable and hard hitting if we’d been able to see more of them actually getting along and being sisters. Similarly, there’s an antagonistic character near the start who’s said to be an old childhood friend of Lucha’s, but the rare sentences we get about their childhood friendship isn’t enough for the reader to feel the true weight of the betrayal that Lucha must be feeling. I just wanted a little more depth from these relationships.

If you’re looking for a book with a creepy living forest or with a unique approach to the chosen one trope then consider checking this one out!

Thank you to Make Me A World and TBR and Beyond Tours for having me on this tour! You can find the full tour schedule here and the rest of my tour stop here

[astralbooks]

Midnight Strikes - Zeba Shahnaz

Read: 11/03/2023 - 12/03/2023

Rating: 3/5

Rep: biracial bisexual side character, brown sapphic side character, side f/f relationship

CW: on page death (including of family members and of main character), suicide, murder, explosions & fire, violence, gun violence, racism & bigotry, referenced colonialism, bullying, reference to bestiality, referenced torture, alcohol consumption

Review:

When a series of bombs go off at the kingdom’s anniversary ball, Anaïs, along with everyone else in attendance, is killed. Then she wakes up a few hours earlier. Nobody else remembers what happened, or knows what’s going to happen. Unless she wants to be stuck in an unending loop of death and destruction for the rest of eternity, she needs to figure out who’s behind this attack and stop them before they can kill her, and the rest of the court, all over again.

I liked Anaïs! She starts the story as a reluctant ball attendee, being pressured by her parents into finding a husband despite knowing that nobody there wants to marry her and she doesn’t want to marry anybody there. Her initial reaction to being caught in the loop, and all her initial floundering, was very believable, as was the progression of what she found herself willing to do in order to try and break it. I really liked how she developed over the course of the story. I enjoyed seeing her building desperation to find a way out, her growing willingness to do increasingly audacious and at times deplorable things to try stopping the explosions, and her determination to find the right solution to the whole situation. As will be familiar from other well known time loop stories, being stuck in a time loop brought out the best version of herself, as well as maybe some elements of the worst version of herself.

The story does get dark, and a decent amount of this darkness stems from the fact that the loop is triggered by Anaïs’ death. If she wants to try the night again, she has to die. There were some loops that she may well have survived if she’d prioritised herself above all else, but the destruction and death toll aside from her was so high that she wanted to try again anyway, and that meant she had to find a way to die. Deliberately dying over and over in order to save the lives of others isn’t something that many people would be able to bring themselves to do, and it speaks volumes about Anaïs that she chose to help rather than run even though it would cost her like this.

Prince Leo was a really interesting character! Half the time he’s playing the role of the drunken younger prince with no responsibilities to speak of, but it becomes apparent that this is largely an act and a defence mechanism. He believes Anaïs more often than he doesn’t, which was a relief. Being stuck in a time loop is such a weird thing to lie about that if someone claims to be in one it’s always a better idea to believe them and skip the hassle, and he mostly does this well. The moment he’s given some kind of purpose for himself he drops all the acts and shows himself to be intelligent, down to earth, and at times downright heroic.

The development of the relationship between Leo and Anaïs is an interesting one. Leo doesn’t remember the loops, and so doesn’t remember Anaïs, so the most he can feel for her at the end of any given night is respect and maybe a crush. At no point is he in love with her. In contrast, Anaïs has a very long time to get to know Leo. I thought the jump between her realising that Leo was someone she could trust to her being in love with him was very quick and I wasn’t wholly convinced by it. However, I really liked how their relationship was written after this point! With every loop she’s not just giving up another chance at her own survival, but she’s giving up whatever dynamic she and Leo have managed to build that time around. She knows him, and she loves him, and she also knows that as long as the loops continue he’s never going to feel the same way about her. That’s something she just has to accept. There’s nothing she can do about it. This disconnect and mismatch in relationships is something that hits hard in time loop stories, and this was no exception. It’s tragic, and that’s the whole point.

In general, the emotions of Anaïs’ loop were well executed. Aside from the things I’ve already touched on, such as the growing disconnect in her relationships and her growing desperation and willingness to do things she ordinarily wouldn’t dream of, another thing this book addresses about the loops is the possibility of Anaïs getting so caught up in them that she deliberately and unnecessarily keeps herself in them indefinitely. If you theoretically have the power to manipulate events so they go exactly how you want them to go, at what point do you stop? At what point do you say you’ve done enough and let time resume its proper course? I thought the eventual resolution was an interesting one, and it’s one that I ultimately fall on the side of liking. 

There’s an attempt at an anti-colonial message in here, but it felt incomplete to me. It didn’t quite land.

The reason why I wanted to read this book in the first place is very simple: I love stories involving time loops. If I had to list out my top five pieces of media across all formats, three of those five involve time loops. I LOVE time loops. And, because I love time loops, I have high standards for them. A big part of what makes them so cool is the butterfly effect of it all, the only things that should be changing from loop to loop should be changing as a direct result of the actions of the person(s) at the centre of the loop. Unfortunately, this book emphatically doesn’t tick that box. I was convinced for a solid chunk of the book that Leo could remember the loops as well because he kept acting so drastically differently from loop to loop for no reason that him remembering the prior attempts was the most reasonable explanation. But no, he didn’t remember anything. He wasn’t the only one acting differently across loops with no explanation but it was most noticeable with him. If you’re not already a big lover of time loops then this might not bother you so much, but I am and it bothered me enough that I honestly nearly dnf’d the book over it. If the loops aren’t rewinding time but are putting her in slightly different alternate universes then just say that, y’know? That would be fine. But she never even considers the possibility. I fully acknowledge that this is a me problem lmao, as I said I have very high standards.

If you’re looking for a unique take on a glittering court fantasy with darker elements then you’ll probably enjoy this one! If you’re looking for a well executed time loop story then you might find that here, depending on how high your standards are and what your priorities are for them. It definitely hits on the emotions of a time loop, and that’s arguably the more important thing.

Thank you to Delacorte Press, NetGalley, and TBR and Beyond Tours for having me on this tour! You can find the full schedule here and the rest of my tour stop here

[astralbooks]

Project Nought - Chelsey Furedi

Read: 18/02/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: brown gay main character, achillean main character, m/m relationship, East Asian non-binary side character, sapphic side character, Māori disabled side character who uses a wheelchair, brown side character, various other queer and non-white side characters including the villains

CW: medical experimentation, confinement, character death (both on page and in backstory), grief, misgendering (brief, not malicious, quickly corrected)

Review:

Ren, a teenager from the year 1997, wakes up in the year 2122 and is told he’s been pulled forward in time as part of a yearly project at New Zealand university. He’s hesitant to fully engage in life in the future at first, and just as he’s starting to relax into everything he and his new friends discover that not all is as it seems and that the giant corporation that has its fingers in every aspect of life might not be as benevolent as it first appears.

I liked the core four characters! Jia is probably my favourite, closely followed by Phoebe. The two of them together make up a textbook grumpy x sunshine couple, though I found the direction their relationship takes to be super interesting! They’re into each other, and they both know it, but they also both know that Jia’s in no position to be in a relationship right now, so they’re not together, they’re friends, and it’s genuinely fine. This approach is a pretty rare one and I found it really refreshing to read!

Mars, the secondary main character, is a total sweetheart. His enthusiasm for the mere concept of time travel is completely understandable, honestly I’d probably be just as hyped if I were in his position. He’s somewhat naive and initially has complete faith and belief in Chronotech, which does cause some trouble for the group, but he’s not incapable of admitting when he’s wrong and when the truth of the situation becomes clear he’s all in. 

All things considered, I think Ren reacted to suddenly waking up over 100 years into his future very well. He has a life back home, and at the exact moment he was taken from he’d just made a discovery and a decision that had the potential to change his life massively, so it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t quite manage to hit the ground running. He gets the hang of it all, though, and he handled every situation thrown his way over the course of the story about as well as could be expected. He’s a solid main character and I enjoyed reading from his perspective!

I would’ve liked a little more build up to the relationship between Ren and Mars. I liked the way it went after the point that they established that they liked each other, I just would’ve preferred a teensy little bit more build up and tension before their initial kiss. This is purely a personal preference, though, and I’d hardly call this a case of instalove. I just like my burns to be a bit slower than this one was.

The overall message of the story serves as a cautionary tale against allowing one company to monopolise all areas of life. Chronotech effectively controls all tech, has strong links in the police, and is even inherently intertwined with the university that Mars goes to, and with this level of influence in society comes a lack of oversight and an ability to exploit and hurt whoever they want without any fear of repercussions. The comparisons between this and the big corporations of today are unavoidable.

I figured out what was going on way before any of the characters did. Being able to predict where a story is going isn’t something that bothers me, I care way more about whether a story is well constructed than I care about its ability to surprise me, but it’s worth noting in case it might bother you. Something that does actually bother me is when part of a mystery is sustained solely through a character refusing to answer questions without a good in-universe reason for doing so, and that unfortunately did come into play a little here. They got it out of her in the end, but they were already allies so there was little reason for the delay other than to drip feed the reader some more. In the grand scheme of things this is a minor complaint, but it’s a pet peeve of mine and so it’s noticeable to me when it happens.

Overall, this was a fun read! The characters were likeable, there was a good balance of funny to serious moments, and the overall message is one that’s sorely needed in the present. If you’re looking for a quick sci-fi read then I’d highly recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to Clarion Books and HarperCollins for providing me with an arc in return for an honest review

[astralbooks]

Girls of Ash and After by Alex Nonymous

Read: 10th February 2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: sapphic main characters, f/f relationship, brown disabled main character who walks with a cane, sapphic side character

CW: ableism, blood & gore, body horror, injury detail including injuries to fingers and eyes, death, on-page child death, death of a parent, kidnapping & confinement, murder, nightmares, physical abuse & torture, religion-based homophobia, internalised homophobia, possession, physically & emotionally abusive parental figure, witchcraft & monsters

Review:

Ever is the first child born in the town of After, so named because it positions itself as a haven for those who’d rather live in a world without, or after, magic and witchcraft. As the daughter of the founder she’s seen as something of a figurehead herself with much of the town looking to her to be a role model. However, when Ever starts having nightmares about the other children of the town being brutally killed, and then those same children start winding up dead, she’s faced with the inescapable fact that there is something magical about her, and if she doesn’t get to the bottom of it soon then it won’t be long until every child in After is dead. To get to the bottom of this she forms a shaky alliance with Alisa, the leader of the town’s secret coven of witches and also the girl who was Ever’s childhood friend until Ever accused Alisa’s mother of witchcraft, leading to Alisa’s mother being banished from the town.

This book had the feeling of a fairytale gone very, very wrong, and I vibed so hard with that! This is Alex’s first time writing body horror and they didn’t hold back in the slightest. The content warnings are very serious. I think she did an excellent job with the descriptions of what was happening, and some of them even made me flinch as I was reading. He also did a good job at writing the forest surrounding After, with it feeling almost like a character in its own right throughout. Very creepy, and very well done.

A main running theme of this book is religion-based trauma and abuse. Ever’s father, the founder and mayor of After, has complete control over the town and his daughter and cites religion as the basis behind nearly all of his decisions. The society he’s built is homophobic, has outlawed magic entirely, and anyone who expresses any sort of dissent is soon ‘banished’ and never seen again. Ever in particular growing up in that household bears the brunt of her father’s expectations, and she’s terrified of what he’ll do to her if he discovers the ways in which she falls short. Sadly, she’s proven to be very correct, and not even being his daughter protects her from physical harm if she tries to challenge him on something.

Growing up in an environment that is explicitly homophobic means that at the start of the story Ever genuinely believes that being queer is bad and wrong. However, this is absolutely not the depressingly prevalent and harmful stereotype of homophobes being secretly gay. When Ever says that queerness is wrong, it’s very clear that she’s just repeating something she’s been told is true her whole life, and that she doesn’t fully believe it herself but hasn’t ever known anything else. She’s not being cruel, and her internalised homophobia comes off as tragic rather than anything else. Her emotional journey through this book was one that I’m sure will resonate with many queer people who’ve been raised in queerphobic households, and her growth and growing acceptance of herself were great to read.

I liked how the relationship between the two girls developed! At the start of the book Alisa hates Ever, and understandably so given what Ever did when they were children. On the other hand, Ever doesn’t dislike Alisa pretty much at all, and while she’d prefer to be reconnecting with her under better circumstances she can’t help but be happy that they’re reconnecting at all. Alisa gradually comes to understand why Ever did what she did, that it wasn’t out of malice but out of fear, and I found the growth of romantic feelings between them to be handled believably. This isn’t Alex’s first book featuring childhood friends to enemies to lovers and it’s something they’re very good at.

Something I thought was really cool was the way the girls referred to each other out loud and in narration, how this differed, and what this tells the reader about their opinions of each other. Ever almost exclusively calls Alisa ‘Isa’ in narration, whereas while Alisa sometimes calls Ever ‘Ev’ out loud she always calls her ‘Ever’ in narration. From this alone the reader knows that Ever never stopped caring about Alisa, and that the same cannot be said for Alisa about Ever. Character names in narration as an indicator of how the narrating character feels about others and about themselves is a narrative device that I adore when skillfully deployed, and this was definitely a case of it being skillfully deployed! I got so excited when I noticed it!

Alex has spoken openly about how Alisa’s disability, while unnamed in the novel, is modeled on her own osteonecrosis, and it was clear throughout that the descriptions of what Alisa was going through and how this affects her came from personal experience. Her disability is taken seriously by both the narrative and by non-villainous characters, it isn’t an afterthought with no impact on the story, but there’s so much more to her character than her disability as well. I’m aware that this should be the baseline expectation for representation, but disability rep is still at a point where good rep needs to be highlighted, and I thought this was good rep. Alisa’s cane being visible on the cover is super exciting! Mobility aids aren’t something that should be hidden away or that people should be ashamed of needing, and so seeing it on the cover in silhouette like it’s just as much a part of Alisa as the rest of her body is really cool!

If you like dark fairytales or books about religious trauma and abuse then I highly encourage giving this one a try!

Thank you to Alex for providing me with an early copy in return for some feedback. Details may differ in the published version.  

[astralbooks]

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride - Roshani Chokshi

Read: 11/02/2023 - 17/02/2023

Rating: 3/5

Rep: Brown main character (likely Persian or Indian though she is unsure), Bedouin main character

CW: strong threat of sexual assault from a parental figure, toxic friendship, emotional abuse, self harm, bullying, death, death of a sibling (in backstory), suicide, attempted murder, major injury, death of a parent (in backstory), child abuse (in backstory)

Review:

This book is told through two points of view in two different time periods. First we have the unnamed bridegroom, Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada’s husband, who she’s made promise not to pry into any aspect of her past. When Indigo’s elderly aunt’s health begins to fail the couple travels to Indigo’s childhood home, and the bridegroom finds that keeping his promise is a lot more difficult than he’d anticipated. The other point of view is Azure, an old friend of Indigo’s, who takes the reader through their childhood and teen years together. She is entirely absent from the present day, and it’s the mystery surrounding her that the bridegroom starts to unravel.

A succinct description of this book would be that it’s a dark fairytale. Chokshi’s writing experience lies in fantasy and this couldn’t be clearer in her writing style, which suits the story being told perfectly. Azure and Indigo both adore mythology, magic, and fairytales. A key aspect of their story, and a big part of their relationship with one another, is their desire to keep the magic even as they grow up. For a lot of the book it’s unclear even to the reader if the magic they’re talking about is real or not, which I suspect is very intentional. By the end there are still one or two things that happened to the bridegroom which were never fully explained away, leaving the possibility open that the girls may not have been entirely wrong. It’s up to the reader.

This book is also a skilled depiction of a toxic and codependent friendship. The relationship between Indigo and Azure isn’t remotely healthy, and at various points could even be described as emotionally abusive. There were times where it looked like Azure might finally break away from Indigo’s expectations and control, but Indigo managed to pull her back in every single time. It’s true to the sad reality of many abusive relationships that even if someone realises that what’s going on isn’t normal or acceptable, it’s still so hard for them to leave.

I was less invested in the bridegroom’s chapters. He stumbled around the edge of the mystery of Azure, building tension with each discovery and each hint towards the reason why nobody’s seen Azure in years, but the real meat of the story was always in Azure’s chapters and not his. 

I didn’t love the final resolution. I can see what Chokshi was going for, but there are a few details about it that don’t ring true for me. With a few tweaks it could’ve been great! As it is I came away feeling dissatisfied, which is a shame.

In all I had a good enough time reading this book and I don’t regret picking it up! If you’re looking for a book about fairytales, and characters who’ll do whatever it takes to keep living in one, then I encourage you to give this one a try.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

[astralbooks]

This Cursed Crown - Alexandra Overy

Read: 23/11/2022 - 29/11/2022

Rating: 4/5

Rep: sapphic main character, sapphic love interest, f/f relationship, deaf side character

CW: fire, burning, on-page death, fantasy violence, major injury, torture, magically-induced suicide attempts, references to physical and emotional abuse, mind control, death of a parent (in backstory)

This book picks up a few weeks on from where These Feathered Flames leaves off. Tourin has been left without a ruler following Izaveta’s disappearance, only Asya knows the truth of what happened on what was supposed to be the night of her sister’s coronation, and the political situation in the palace is looking dicier with each day that passes. Asya is faced with having to figure out a way to survive in this environment despite the vast majority of people there despising her, when all she really wants to do is find her sister. Meanwhile, Izaveta wakes up in a totally sealed room, with no idea how she’s even alive, let alone where she is or how she can hope to make it out of there.

Asya was my favourite of the two sisters throughout the first book, and I still loved her here, but surprisingly Izaveta nudged her off that top spot for me. Izaveta spends the first half of the book almost entirely isolated, so a lot of her chapters are dedicated to introspection and trying to figure her situation out. I really loved seeing inside her head, both in this and the second half! Many of the decisions she makes can be seen as heartless, but she always tries to do the best thing she possibly can. The choices she’s presented with often don’t have a clear right answer, and making these decisions isn’t easy for her. Adding to this is the fact that she’s come back to life just that little bit wrong, and she spends a lot of the book’s runtime grappling with this and trying to account for it. Izaveta here is not entirely the same as Izaveta as she once was.

Asya snaps and it’s glorious. Don’t continuously torment the person who can burn you alive with merely a thought if you aren’t prepared for her to burn you alive. Yes, there are consequences that are less than ideal, but they had it coming. Asya has never done anything wrong in her entire life.

When I finished the first book, I was expecting the relationship between Asya and Yuliana to be a lot more complicated going forwards than it ultimately ended up being. The rise of a bigger threat has given Yuliana’s brother a bit of perspective, and Asya forgave Yuliana for her part in everything pretty much immediately. Asya and Yuliana spend this book on the same page regarding their relationship, and I really enjoyed that! They both had more than enough going on, the last thing they needed was relationship drama on top of that, and I was glad that they got to spend the book confident in their feelings towards each other.

I really enjoyed the development of Nikov’s friendship with Asya during the first half of the book! He’s the only person at the palace that Asya can trust to care about Izaveta’s wellbeing, and they quickly join forces to hunt for any sort of clues that could lead them to her. Eventually Nikov and Izaveta are reunited, and their slow burn romance develops some very interesting new layers to it. He cares deeply for both sisters, one romantically and one platonically, and wants to do everything he can to help them and keep them safe. Whether it’s possible for him to do that is another matter entirely. There’s a lot more to him than initially appears.

Like in the first book, ultimately the emotional core of this book is the sisters and their relationship! They love each other so much, to the point that they’re probably willing to go too far and sacrifice too much for each other’s sake, and in Izaveta’s case without much regard for Asya’s opinion on the matter. Watching their relationship develop from this into something a lot healthier, without their closeness having to be sacrificed for it, was a joy. By the end of the book they’re closer to one another than they’ve ever been

I didn’t reread the first book before diving into this one, and that was a mistake. I remembered the broad strokes of the plot but there were a lot of details that ended up being a lot more significant than I was expecting them to be, and I had no memory of them. This undoubtedly limited my enjoyment of this book, which is a shame! I’ve probably learned nothing from this, but maybe don’t make the same mistake as me and make sure to have read book one recently before moving on to this one.

All in all, this was a solid conclusion to a strong duology that I’m sure fantasy lovers will enjoy!

Thank you to Edelweiss, Inkyard Press, and HarperCollins for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

[astralbooks]

One for All - Lillie Lainoff

Read: 06/02/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: main character with POTS, sapphic side characters, f/f side relationship

CW: ableism, death of a parent, referenced sexual assault

Tania is the daughter of a former musketeer. Her childhood spent fencing with her father and hearing all about his adventures has led to her wanting nothing more than to follow in his footsteps. Following her father’s mysterious death, Tania is sent to a finishing school in Paris, only to learn that this school is secretly a training ground for young girls to become musketeers themselves.

The most important relationships in this book is the friendship Tania builds with the other girls at the school. Théa, Portia, and Aria all welcome Tania into their group right from the start and their friendship was really lovely to read about. They’re all fiercely supportive of each other and love each other deeply, and they celebrate each other’s successes rather than constantly trying to be better than each other. Being a musketeer means working well as a team, which isn’t a problem here. You could definitely use the term ‘found family’ to describe these four.

The romance element of this book is a more minor plot point than the relationships between the girls. I wasn’t a huge fan of it for a lot of the book, and there’s a particular incident that I found frustrating due to how blown out of proportion everything got. However, I did like the eventual direction that this romance went in. I thought it was interesting, and something that you don’t see all that often. I would suggest that you don’t go into this expecting a capital R Romance because if you do then you’re going to be disappointed.

Tania’s POTS affects nearly everything she does, and so it’s naturally almost always on her mind. At the start of the book she’s surrounded by people in her hometown who think that because Tania is disabled she must be weak and not worth spending their time on, which of course isn’t true, but ableism like this is something that real disabled people unfortunately face every day. As the book goes on Tania starts to receive the support and accommodations she needs, and with this support Tania is able to thrive and achieve the things she’s always wanted to be able to do. I hope that this book can pave the way for even more depictions of characters with POTS and other chronic conditions going forwards.

In all, I had a good time reading this one. If anything about the book’s description has caught your attention then I’d recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review