emmacantread

[emmacantread]

Books to read if you like Yellowjackets

Sooo I’m a big fan of this show, and with the third season coming out right now I thought I’d share some recs for you to read once the final episode airs and we’re left waiting for two more years for season four. Enjoy!!

1. Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

I read this years ago and loved it and I feel like it’s very similar to the show in a lot of ways.

The story is about this boarding school for girls that was open during the early 1900s and was shut down due to a series of deaths that happened there and that remain a mistery to this day. In present day, a book has been written about the tragedy, and a film adaptation is on the works. On one side, we follow the women involved in the making of the film as weird, unsettling things start happening during shooting (which is happening in the abandoned boarding school), and on the other, we follow the story of the women who died and slowly start figuring out what actually happened.

Obviously, we’ve got the giant yellowjacket on the cover. They make appearances throughout the story and are very relevant to the plot.

Aside from that, there’s a lot of sapphic characters in both timelines who all have very complicated relationships with each other.

Finally, we also have a theme of not really knowing if the strange things happening around them is actually supernatural or not.

It’s been a while since I first read it, but some scenes have really stuck with me! It has this Yellowjackets-ism of mixing the experiences of girls and women with supernatural(ish?) horror.

2. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It’s not as similar to Yellowjackets as the others in this list, but I think it might appeal to fans anyway, so I decided to include it.

The story follows the married couple Miri and Leah. Leah is a marine biologist, and she sets out on a deep sea expedition that’s only supposed to last for a couple weeks, but she ends up disappearing for six months. When she miraculously comes back. Miri notices that there’s something deeply wrong with her, and whatever Leah found in the ocean, she brought some of it back with her.

Through Miri’s poin of view in the story, we see their relationship as it was before the expedition and after Leah came back, along with how Miri handled Leah’s absence. Through Leah’s point of view we see what actually happened during those six months in the submarine.

This book is written beautifully, it’s very immersive and shows grief and loss in a very real way.

I would classify this as literary horror, so it has a very slow plot and a lot of inner reflection from the characters, but in a way that is interesting to read. I think the aspects of complicated relationships between women and also of suddenly being in a hostile natural environment where an entity might be lurking will be appealing to Yellowjackets fans!

3: House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

This book is YA, but I think it could be enjoyed by an older audience too.

It follows three sisters, Grey, Vivi and Iris, who all suddenly went missing when they were kids only to miraculously reappear a month later with no memory of what had happened.

Years later, the eldest sister, Grey, goes missing again, and Vivi and Iris resolve to find her, discovering the secrets of their old disappearance in the process.

The atmosphere of this book is incredible, it feels beautiful and creepy at the same time, and the relationship with the sisters is very intereseting too. It has sapphic characters but not sapphic romance.

I think you should read this especially if you like Lottie and her more culty, mystic side. Grey reminds me a bit of her.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls is also YA, and it might read young but I think it’s worth it anyway.

It’s about this girls’ boarding school (another one lmao) on an island where some kind of weird virus broke, and they’ve all been quarantined for a couple of years. This virus, however, makes the girls and the nature around them change in strange, dangerous ways. When Hetty’s best friend Byatt goes suddenly missing, she starts looking for her and discovering secrets about the virus, the quarantine and what is actually happening.

This book I feel gets the closest to the dynamic that the yellowjackets have in the show, and also has this whole The Woods Are Weird thing going on. It has a little bit of sapphic romance too, and one of the characters reminds me of Nat.

That’s pretty much it, I hope you like them if you read them!!

Emma 🎃

[emmacantread]

First review!!

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

A Dark and Drowning Tide is a fantasy novel that came out on September of 2024 and even though I’d been waiting to read it for a very long time, I only got around to it now.

The story follows Lorelei, a folklorist, on an expedition funded by the king of her country, who wants to find a fabled magical river that is said to grant immense power. However, when Lorelei’s mentor and leader of the expedition is murdered, she has to take charge and find out who did it while also finding the river for the king.

This book was a big disapointment for me, which sucks because I really looked forward to reading it. None of it was particularly interesting or unique, and I found the final political message very troubling.

Spoilers ahead!

It started out well, the setting up of the world and the mistery were good, but everything kept worsening the longer I read. None of the characters or their relationships with each other were particularly interesting. Even though the main couple had some good romantic moments, the book is marketed as having a “rivals to lovers” relationship, and I thought the reason why Lorelei hated Sylvia (the love interest) didn’t make much sense at all, and it turned out to be one of those situations where the love interest was actually in love with the mc the whole time and the mc just didn’t notice, which made it kind of ridiculous.

Also, the magic system was very vague and unoriginal. Some characters have the ability to manipulate water because of a magical element found in it called aether, but it’s never explained whether this power is genetic or if it can show up in anybody, and not much is mentioned on how people learn to use it and develop different techniques for it. The magical creatures in the world were interesting, but mostly taken from real life folklore, so not very creative.

The mistery also wasn’t very intriguing to me, and a lot of the decisions taken in the story didn’t make a lot of sense.

What made me dislike the book the most though, is the message it seems to end with. The kingdom of the story is an empire that has conquered a lot of neighboring kingdoms, and the crew accompanying Lorelai is made up of the five heirs of these same countries that now have become part of the king’s reign. Throughout the story it is emphazised that the king isn’t a good person and that colonized people are greatly affected by the empire and at risk of losing their cultures and religions. Lorelei is part of a religious group which is meant to represent real life Jewish people, and it is stated several times that the king doesn’t care about her people being killed or used as scapegoats, and will only keep her close as long as she’s useful. Through the first half of the book, it looked to me like they were going to go against the king’s wishes and maybe plot agaisnt him but they don’t do that at any point. Lorelei and Sylvia find the river, give him its power so he can continue fueling his empire and start working for him like they don’t mind their people being colonized and discriminated against.

Furthermore, the two characters that want to sabotage the expedition and use the power of the river to defeat the king and liberate their countries are written as the villains and treated as such by the main characters.

By the end of the story it looked like the message of it was “yeah colonization is kinda bad but we should just leave it as it is because violence is never the answer.” I don’t know if this was the author’s intention or if she didn’t realize what the ending sounded like.

Overall, i thought the book was boring and unoriginal, on top of having a very questionable political message.

Rated, I would probably give it a 2/10

Thanks for reading if you got this far into my rambling!!

Emma 🎃

[emmacantread]

Hi!!!

I’ve wanted to start a blog like this for a very long time, I’ve loved reading my whole life and really wanted a space where I could share my opinions. Like probably everyone on this app I mostly read fantasy, sci-fi and horror, so if that’s your thing stay around!

También hablo español así que si hablo de un libro originalmente en ese idioma seguro también haga el post así jajsjajjs

Emma 🎃

[emmacantread]

Hello please read some Arsène Lupin book

Will do 🫡