amelianotthepilot's reviews
801 reviews

I was really hopeful for this one it seems right up my alley: forests, a hot mysterious magical man, gothic house horror. But it really fell flat for me.

It is a polish mythology based book with a forest, a hot mysterious magical man, and gothic horror house but it just sorta seemed like a Howl's Moving Castle and Beauty and the Beast knock off (in a bad way).

Liska Radost has magic which she feels it is a curse, all the townspeople fear her and she needs to keep it hidden but she hears of a mythical magic flower in the woods that if plucked you'll be granted one wish. So she finds the flower and goes to pluck it only to be stopped by a stag/man, 'the Leszy'. (Probably the only thing I enjoyed from this story was the cool body horror going on with the description of Leszy morphing from stag to human.) Leszy says he will grant her wish if she becomes his housekeeper for a year. Liska is very shy and enjoys housework, alla Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle, and spends most of her days cleaning his derelict forest house and befriending the kitchen demon (sound familiar?) until the house likes her better than him. Alla howl's moving castle the Leszy is very moody and dramatic and is often away from the house doing some sort of fighting that Liska (and the reader) are not privy to until later.  Leszy wears a stag mask for most of the book, refusing to reveal his face or anything true about himself, until he comes home injured one night (alla Howl) and she must heal him only to discover !shocker! he's just a man!(and oh no hes hot !). Meanwhile, Leszy is attempting to teach Liska magic but since she has such trauma surrounding it, it's not going well.  We spend the whole book finding out how he's a bad person and has done bad/questionable things,  ending with a really flat finale. It was not satisfying.

I think there were too many things going on in this book: the flower wish, Liska learning to use and control her magic, Leszy's curse, fighting the evil magic.

Where it really fell flat for me was that Howl of Howl's Moving Castle, really cares for Sophie and we can see that again and again through his actions. But since this was Liska's perspective we never see Leszy do anything nice or care for her in any way until the end and they're suddenly in love it didn't feel right. I never felt like they were in love more than just physical attraction and the ending was ridiculous. Also Sophie of Howl's Moving Castle,  is never forced to clean Howl's house or forced to stay where she is, she chooses that, but Leszy forces Liska to stay and makes her clean and cook.

Overall disappointed in a book that seemed perfect vibes.

im not super into historical fiction but this was definitely interesting. 

the plot follows siblings split by WWI. Laura was a field nurse on the fronts before she was wounded and discharged. Upon returning home to Halifax, Canada she witnesses the great explosion and looses her parents. Now she is depressed and hoping against hope to hear from her brother on the fronts who she's presumed to be dead. She wanders through life until receiving a box of his stuff confirming him dead but also receives an unsolicited spiritual reading from her housemates who claim he's still alive. Needing proof with her own eyes she manages to get her way back to the front where she can investigate his death for sure.
Meanwhile, we get her brother Freddie's perspective from three months ago on the front lines.

The story twists history with a mystical ghostly figure described on the fronts, a house that appears to soldiers and has flowing alcohol and beautiful music performances. Is it a mirage or real magic?

I enjoyed the concept of this despite not often reading historical fiction and I loved the mysticism but thought it took away from the story when it turned into full-blown fantasy magic. I think it would've been more interesting if left up to interpretation to the audience whether the experiences were true or a result of a war riddle haze.

i loved this silly little book
its a unique little YA fantasy full of classic tropes and i ate it up
its for the disney girlies, the once upon a time girlies, the vampire girlies, the peasant/royal girlies 

I love how it plays around the idea of fantasy kingdoms and has all the classic Disney fantasy vibes of baroque fancy colorful buildings and towns with friendly bakers and neighbors and evil step family with orphaned naive heroic girls who think they'll be saved. I loved how the MC is that classic damsel in distress believing in wishing on stars and true love and I can't wait for her to be slowly crushed by the realization that there is no prince coming to save her lol 

It was also super fast-paced which was fun and also very solidly in the area of "YA" its clean romance with fun little silly kisses and romance.

I thought it was perfectly tropey with interesting world-building. Classic tropes include: peasant/royal, hurt/comfort, enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, miscommunication, etc
The world-building was a mix of classic fairytale fantasy kingdoms with pretty ball gowns and princely looks with some magic sprinkled in. I liked the Fates aspect which essentially functions as Gods but have tarot cards vibe base.

not gonna lie when I say I picked these up for the beautiful (UK) covers but stayed for the dumb tropes
that had me kicking my feet and giggling all the way through  10/10

2024 (4 stars): Yet again another banger. In this book Rose and Lissa figure out more Spirit things with Adrian and Rose and Dimitri's relationship furthers while Strigoi attacks become even worse and worse leading to a big cliffhanger battle at the end. Now Rose is being plagued by ghosts and it's affecting her focus and she's left with a terrible mission at the end. 

2014 (5 stars): This series is seriously getting better with each book.
The ending of this book is devastating but the Cabin Scene almost makes it worth the pain-but not fully.  So many great things happened in this book and so many emotional things and ROMITRI. thats it. thats all you need to know. go read this book.

2024 (4 stars): This sequel certainly doesn't fall to second-book syndrome. This book features the only moment I really vividly remembered from this series which is when Rose meets Adrian at the ski resort. In this book, Rose and Lissa having narrowly escaped last year and now learned more about their connection, try to better figure out their situation and skills. The Strigoi attacks are getting worse though so the school decides to bring all the students to a remote ski resort for the winter vacation.😂 An introduction of new love interests for Rose, Adrian a rich older royal Moroi who is fully enamored with her, and Mason her best friend Dhampir classmate, but her relationship with Dimitri evolves further. When Mason finds out about a group of Stigoi located nearby he leads a small group of students to defeat them only for it to be a complete mess.

2014 (5 stars): This sequel was even better than the first book!  I hope this series continues to have exciting twists and turns in the lives of guardians and vampires.

a fun dnd style high fantasy story with interesting world-building.  I loved that we got so much diversity and disability representation, the book was queer and had a physically disabled main character and characters using sign language.  

The story follows four characters brought together on one quest, Kissen grew up in a coastal town that worshipped the sea god but when the sea was not providing any longer the townspeople sacrificed her and her family to the fire god leaving her badly scarred and missing a leg. Years later she is now a grown woman and has made a life as a god killer, a sort of mercenary hire that kills off local problematic gods since the King has since banned all gods after ~the war~. Meanwhile Inara, has a god problem. She is a young highborn teen who has somehow become attached to a small hare-like god, Skedi, the god of white lies. They seek Kissen's help in becoming detached from each other without killing either Inara or the god. On their journey to the old lands, they end up on a travelling group with Elogast, a former King's knight now turned baker. After a series of unfortunate events in the royal family, his best friend and charge became the King and they went to battle together against the gods, but after the war, Elo quits his post and retires only for the King to come knocking on his door one night to ask for assistance for an old friend, and of course, loyal Elo will do anything for him.

i don't really know why there were POV switches since the characters were mostly all together the whole time, I also felt that the different POVs all had similar sounding voices so it was hard to tell apart. I think maybe it would have been better from an omnipotent 3rd person POV.

I also felt that the plot was maybe not the most interesting story, I was more curious about Kissen's backstory and also the war story. I was more interested in how these character's got here. The plot we got was very obvious 

although the story had various queer characters and two of the main characters were bi, ?it somehow felt like queerbaiting? we love bi rep but i feel like lesbian rep is so far and few between and was excited when it seemed the MC was lesbian- I've never been disappointed until now for a character to turn out bi lol. Also the king and Elo seemed really homoerotic just saying...😂

I really enjoyed this comic but watched the move after and actually enjoyed the movie far more. I think the comic is cute vibes, interesting world-building, and characters but leaves a lot of the story threads unresolved and what the movie has changed and rebuilt really added to the story positively. very cute story overall though i loved the medieval but slight technology vibes with trans/queer metaphors

ughhhhh this book had me punchin walls and kicking blankets it was so cute
Iris Winnow has won a writing competition and although she didn't finish school because they ran out of money she now has the opportunity to become a columnist at a leading newspaper in the city. However, her academic rival, Roman C Kitt, is a wealthy git who seems to do everything in his power to annoy her and is her only competition for the columnist role. 
*stefan voice* This book has everything: rivals to lovers, austen-esque letter exchanges, the missed important letter trope, 1940s city vibes but with a magical twist, a rich boy not allowed to pursue his true love since shes poor, a poor girl struggling to get by but not letting anyone know or help, a WWI-esque war, and a god problem with persephoneXhades vibes.

2024 (1 star): This is such a drastic turn from the first three. The first three books were a fun little YA adventure with wild dramatic twists in each one. This book features a random trip to Russia with an idealized abusive relationship. 0/10
The plot follows Rose now in Russia pursuing Dimitri but first, she meets Sydney a human alchemist and Dimitri's entire family as well as an older Russian spirit and shadow-kissed couple. I yet again think this could've been a great Sapphic bodyguard trope story but alas. This book was so frustrating as for some reason we go against all of Rose's personality traits and she becomes a drugged-up Stockholm syndrome girlie. AND YET SHE STILL LOVES HIM this is not it guys

2014 (3 stars): I really didn't like this one as much as the first three in the series. I don't know whether or not my impression of the book was effected by my stress from the school work and musical that my show is putting on or not but I really just didn't like this one. It felt wrong and was sad throughout pretty much the entire thing.

It wasn't bad but it wasn't good and I certainly don't understand the hype. I also think this author has never seen hockey before. 

It follows Anastasia, a partner figure skater headed to the Olympics, and Nate, the captain of the hockey team headed for the NLS. They of course are enemies to lovers forced to use the same icerink after the hockey teams' rink is destroyed by vandals. I didn't love how Anastasia was that classic female trope who is an uptight, A-type, rule-following girl who is 'fixed' by her chill, go-with-the-flow boyfriend. Anastasia deals with an eating disorder, an overbearing controlling skating partner, and commitment issues all while trying to make it to the Olympics. 

I would gladly completely rip out the 2 years later epilogue it gave me such ick.

My main critique comes with the first two chapters that intro our main characters. The main male's chapter starts with him waking up next to a naked woman, having blacked out. It never addresses this as rape and largely ignores men being taken advantage of but does highlight that being drunk=no consent.

Tropes: reader girl/jock boy, dainty itty bitty tiny girl/massive man, man fixes the girl, forced proximity, enemies to lovers, falling in an ice cold lake