#the last heir to blackwood library

[freckles-and-books]

I’ve been amassing books about magical libraries/books. It’s time I read some of them. This one is first!

[marzipanandminutiae]

man, Last Heir To Blackwood Library is good in many ways, but its protagonist has gotten hit with the Idiot Stick way earlier and more thoroughly than she should have

like

yeah okay she's being fed upon by a sentient library and she's becoming weak and forgetful, but it seems inconsistent how Herself/Aware she is at any given time. she forgets things but it isn't making her any less intelligent or strong-minded as far as I can tell

they'd better reveal that Arthur has mind control powers later on, because otherwise I can't fathom how Ivy as established at the beginning of the book- and as she continues to seem despite losing time and developing amnesia -would agree to marry his obviously evil ass like a week after meeting him, when they've spent a total of ~6 hours together max

loneliness wouldn't make one THAT desperate in such a short time, not when one has been repeatedly described as "not interested in marrying" by the narration. so I have to conclude that she's either being possessed or she's not very bright

And like don't get me wrong- I'm SO HERE for bad decision queens as protagonists. see also: my favorite movie and Edith "want to climb that clearly questionable baronet like a tree" Cushing. it's just that her bad decisions don't gel with what we see of her character before she starts making them

(I'm hoping the deal with the anchoress and the monk is going to be "there is no monk; the anchoress was perverted into a mad monk over years of telephone games and The PatriarchyTM, and she and Ivy will work together something something triumph of Women What Read Books over men who want to control them" but I'm not optimistic at this point)

[leatherjacketmixtapes]

gigantic caramel apple pancakes just really hit right on a dreary, chilly Friday.

currently reading: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

[radedneko]

Heaven truly was an untouched stash of books, just waiting to be opened and read.

~The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

[wearethekat]

April Book Reviews: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

Picked up this new book from the library sans recommendation since it looked plausibly interesting. In the best historical romance fashion, Ivy Radcliffe suddenly finds herself heir to a title and an ancestral home. Unfortunately, she lives in the gothic romance genre, and the sinister allure of the house's library poses a real and mysterious threat...

This was a passable, if not particularly noteworthy, gothic novel. I am a fan of Sinister House Stories and also of libraries, but I was not a fan of the lackluster and unconvincing straight romance also featured in this book. The supernatural worldbuilding wasn't much of a standout either.

Fun, but probably only for the gothic novel completionists in your life.

[withsomejam]

Great Gothic Reads

When I first got my Kindle last year, I got through so many amazing books and I definitely noticed a theme emerging. A lot of the books fell into more of a gothic theme. Now I define Gothic reads as those that fall into both the romance and the uncanny -those that have almost a magical realism to it, where some things are too on the nose to be a coincidence. The theme for me plays with…

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's Historical Fiction TBR - Part 1

[annafromuni]

A Haunted House and an Old Library - I Immediately Love It

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library is my first Hester Fox book, though after this is certain won’t be my last. The setting is 1925 London and a woman finds herself the sole heir to an old estate in Yorkshire, an estate that has been owned by a very distant branch of her family. With little tying her to London and a legal demand requiring her to live on the estate, she heads up to Yorkshire and…

[thegothiclibrary]

Review of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

When Ivy Radcliffe suddenly inherits a country estate with a grand and ancient library from an unknown relative, it seems like a dream come true. But that dream slowly turns into a nightmare as the library’s dark secrets come to light. This is the premise of Hester Fox’s Gothic fantasy novel The Last Heir to Blackwood Library, which came out back in April.  Continue reading Untitled

[beckysbook5]

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox - ARC Review!

Today on my blog I have a review for #TheLastHeirtoBlackwoodLibrary by Hester Fox. An atmospheric read filled with a Gothic setting, fantasy elements and a little bit of horror! @LiteracyBatman #BookReview

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home. The abbey is foreboding, the servants…

[authorunpublished]

Book Review: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Title: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library Author: Hester Fox Genre: Historical, Fantasy, Gothic, Mystery, Romance Rating: 3 Stars Description/Synopsis: With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing…

[just-a-bookish-reader]

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library Book Review

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox My rating: 5 of 5 stars Thank you to HarperCollins for the extremely early ARC! This was so much fun! The atmosphere was amazingly done, the discussion of mental health and generational trauma and trauma caused by war and even memory loss (magical or otherwise) felt so well done, and realistic, despite how fantastical the plot was!

I will admit that much of it was predictable up until we discover who our bad guy is - but I think that was intentional - in fact, I'm almost certain of it. I may or may not also be the reason that Hester Fox finally posted her spotify playlist to her instagram story, I felt quite called out, but I may have to reread or wait til the actual release date and listen to the playlist while reading it again! Isolated, gothic, dark academia, secret families and hidden heritage, magical books that record every memory as yours slips away - terrifying truly, but written so well that it felt not so scary as it could have been - toeing that line of dark gothic fantasy and full on horror! I think I'm gonna have to read some more Hester Fox to tide me over for a while! * No spoilers right now as the book does not come out until April* View all my reviews

[asexualbookbird]

August feels. Blurry. The Thursday of the year. Of the summer? IT feels like the year. I managed to fill out my entire Summer Bingo Board for the library. I haven't heard back about winning any prizes, but I had fun and that's what counts. Bingo made me branch out of my comfort zone which was really neat. Can't say I'll do it more often, a comfort zone is comfortable, but I do enjoy reading something Different every now and then. Did some crafty things this month, which has been a lot of fun, and I've been Smart and Wise and started on holiday gifts so I'm not scrambling in December. It's called personal growth~

The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐ - I'm salty about this. Yes, it's an improvement, but it still sucks. The world and magic is so neat, but we're stuck with a plot Like That. Made me do an actual full review on goodreads and on tumblr if you want all the details.

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐- I kept my original rating because honestly I felt the same as I did years ago. It's worse than the updated version, but it's the core of the novel that needs changing. Props to this one at least for making Paige asexual. I do not want to see this book on ace book lists ever again.

The Adventure Zone: The Suffering Game by The McElroys and Carey Pietsch ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- One of the best installments so far. The art is AMAZING, I love the meta they're doing with Griffin and The Hunger, it was a little rushed and I'm bummed we aren't getting a full adaptation of The Stolen Century, but this is still right up there with Petals to the Metal for me!

The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - T Kingfisher has never written a bad novel to me, but this one did take me longer than her others to really click. The audio narrator had some inflections that didn't work for my brain, but once they went through the door, things got Weird and picked up. These two made so many stupid decisions, but it still felt in character! Big Stan Pines energy coming from that uncle.

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - For book bingo! Got me a square for Read Nonfiction, Read Something About The Environment, and Read Something You Found from Book Page (a magazine advertising new and upcoming books). AND it had a local connection. I learned a lot, it was really neat and didn't feel like I was reading a textbook. It was very engaging, and has me looking at grocery stores differently. It was hard to find, though, because Frostbite is a very common name in the urban fantasy romance genre.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oof. Very heavy, very creepy, very GOOD. Did not expect the many graphic dog deaths, but that was on me. Technically I WAS warned, my brain just didn't register "SGJ dogs are not safe" as "The dog dies in this one". The audio narrator was very good, but I had to listen to the opening a couple times to really get everything to click. It might've been easier had I" read it myself, but the cadence of the narrator really added to the story.

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox ⭐ - Wow when was the last time I had a true one star read. (Actually not too long ago. It was The Novice.) This wanted so badly to be The Haunting of Hill House, but if you want another book like Hill House, just read Starling House. We missed what actually happened in the book because the main character was losing her memory. If you want that, go read Harrow the Ninth. This was a mess and I hated it.

On that note, I need to read something to recharge my faith in books, so MURDERBOT TIME! That's my only reading plan for September, but now I'm feeling Rushed because the year is almost over and I still have about half of my reading goals list left. Whoops. I'd also like to at least attempt some of the Swordtember prompts, if not do all of them. That looks like a lot of fun! So! Onward we go!

[leatherjacketmixtapes]

accountability post for the challenge books I need to finish by the end of the year:

The House of Fortune

The Gilded Wolves

The Villa

Silver Nitrate

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Daughter of the Moon Goddess

The Queen of the Night

The Secret History

Hell Bent

Wolf Hall

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Fairy Tale

The Ex Hex

The Shadow Rising

[starsuncounted]

3, 9, and 13 for the book asks?

Thanks for the ask!

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Of books new to me this year and in no particular order:

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

A River Enchanted/A Fire Endless

Ten Thousand Stitches

Howl's Moving Castle

Persuasion

9. Did you get into any new genres?

Not really, although I tried a couple new genres. I read a couple contemporary romance novels (The Dead Romantics and The Seven-Year Slip) by Ashley Poston and loved them, but I think it's more a case of loving her writing than loving the genre.

And I finally dipped my toe into historical romance and immediately realized it's Not For Me.

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

I dropped most of the ones I disliked partway through, but of the ones I forced myself to finish: The Jane Austen Project and The Last Heir to Blackwood Library.

The Jane Austen Project was all around terrible, with shoddy worldbuilding, cardboard characters, and lackluster romance. And I will uh. never think of Henry Austen the same way again.

The Last Heir of Blackwood Library was, imo, sloppily written and used the amnesia trope as a crutch for actually fleshing out the plot, characters, and relationships. I'm not a fan of the amnesia trope to begin with, so it really hit a sour note for me.

[end-of-year book asks]

[wearethekat]

April Book Reviews Overview

A Tyranny of Queens (Foz Meadows)

Paladin's Strength (T Kingfisher)

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett)

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library (Hester Fox)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (SA Chakraborty)

Path of Fate (Diana Francis)

The Daughters of Izdihar (Hadeer Elsbai)

A Thief in the Night (KJ Charles)

Feed Them Silence (Lee Mandelo)

Bitter Medicine (Mia Tsai)

Notorious Sorcerer (Davinia Evans)

The Circus Infinite (Khan Wong)

Untethered Sky (Fonda Lee)

Ninefox Gambit (Yoon Ha Lee)