ashley_mrose530's reviews
434 reviews

This one was okay. It wasn't terrible, but I didn't love it either. I've been trying to find a good fantasy series to read again and my Libby has this whole series, so I'm hoping that it continues to get better as I go on. 
It did take me a while to get used to this one. There was a lot of POV jumping as well as time jumping and it was really confusing at first because of that. I had a hard time keeping the characters straight and remembering who was in what role. But once I got that, it was a lot easier to go with the flow of the time jumping and the story in general.
I really like the magic system here with the different worlds opening into the characters' realm and spilling their contents including monsters as well as what they call the "elders" who seem like they are immortal but actually only have a much longer life span than humans. It's really interesting to see all of these elements play out together.
That being said, I do think the world building is still pretty confusing for me. I think the other realms are created by different gods that humans have all heard of but don't believe in anymore? I get that part, but I'm not sure why some people have magic and others don't. As far as I can tell, the elders are different from the spindles. The elders don't necessarily have magic but are super strong and heal very quickly. The spindles I think are supposed to have magic? I remember someone saying "spindle magic" at one point about the old witch, but I thought Corayne was also a descendent of a spindle family so where is her magic? And the priests have magic? Maybe? I don't know. Either way, the world building needed a little more explanation for me.
I thought the pacing of the book was a little iffy too. I liked that there were action scenes to break up the monotony of the traveling scenes, but the slower-paced scenes still seemed to drag on a little bit too much for me and I lost interest in them quite a few times (this might be why I don't fully understand the world yet). But the action scenes were so good and would bring my attention right back.
I also enjoyed the very small hints that we're going to get romance side plots. I can just tell that the elder and the assassin are going to be a hate-to-love troupe and their banter is so funny. And I like Corayne and the squire as well. They'll be cute together. And I'm very excited about the found family aspect that is happening as well. I can't wait to love all of them like I always do with found family characters.

This was a really cute, introspective love story between two nonbinary people who are neurodivergent.
I loved the representation in this book. It really helped me understand the way some neurodivergent people's brains might work and the struggles they might have to face because of it. I also liked how they were both nonbinary but presented their gender in different ways. It really showed how vastly different and wide the nonbinary umbrella can be.
I also liked the two characters as their relationship together grew. They were both so cute as their feelings developed and grew more romantic in nature rather than just platonic.
Unfortunately I didn't understand the magical realism part of this story. I don't understand why it was necessary for the story in general and the world building for it was lacking as well. Why were these two the only ones who could see it? Is it all neurodivergent people who can? Or is just them? And what did the "haunting" at Lore's apartment have to do with the world under the lake? I get that it was a way for them to each realize that they needed to process the bad things that happened to them or that they did, but I didn't understand why it was this lake world or where it came from or anything. It just really didn't work and it bothered me at the end when I realized that I really wasn't going to get any of those questions answered.
As a magical realism book, this one didn't work for me. If it had just been a contemporary book with a little romance then it might have worked alright, but as it is, it doesn't. 

This was another really good horror book! The plot reminded me a lot of What Moves the Dead with a mushroom species taking over the human body and such. It's such a fascinating idea. 
I really liked the main character, Vern. She was so self-sufficient and knew how to survive right from the start even though she grew up with everything she ever needed. It does seem a little far-fetched that she just knew how to shoot, kill, clean, and cook game as well as build shelters and everything else she would need to know in order to survive on her own in the woods for years, but it didn't bother me while I was reading. She was still really impressive especially with how she just rolled with the punches as her body began to change with the fungus infection. I would definitely have freaked out, but you could tell that was not Vern's style.
I also loved the representation in this book. Vern was born intersex and identifies as a woman and her love interest is two-spirit. Not to mention that Vern is basically blind with her vision being so bad. It's always great to see different people represented in literature. 
I will say that I didn't completely understand the whole government and Cainland thing and how Ollie combined with that as well. It was a little confusing for me, but I feel like I might have missed a couple things while listening at work, so if I ever read it physically, that might be cleared up.
Speaking of the audiobook, the narrator was fantastic. The writing was beautiful and the narrator's voice fit it so well. I loved the whole experience.
Overall, a great horror book and probably a good one for anyone who enjoys T. Kingfisher's horror books as well. 

I actually really enjoyed this one.
The tension between the two main characters was perfect honestly. The rivals to lovers troupe and the banter between them and then their chemistry was superb. The scene when Marynka rubs something off Zosia's face and then licks it off her finger has me absolutely feral. It was so good. The author did a great job of ratcheting up the tension between them as the story went on and I loved that it wasn't broken until the very end. That's how a rivals/enemies to lovers troupe should be! An absolute perfect example of it here. 
That being said, there were a significant amount of drawbacks in this book. First of all, the world-building was not that good. I kind of with the author's note would have been put at the beginning of the story because I had the hardest time figuring out if they were all part of the same kingdom or if the witches were traveling to different kingdoms to kill their princes or what was happening. It makes a little more sense that this is all set in one European country, Poland, ravaged by wars. I just couldn't wrap my head around it throughout the whole book.
And then the magic system was odd as well. It seemed like the witches had magic that they could give to whoever they wanted but then there was "evil magic" and "good magic" which made things confusing especially since the "good magic" wasn't seen very often. It wasn't even really defined what made the difference. The good magic was supposedly given by the gods but where did the evil magic come from? And how do they know it's not from the gods as well? It was just really confusing for me. 
Finally, the pacing was off a little bit sometimes. It started off really good ass we learned everything and that first line drew me in right away, but then it started to kind of drag as they traveled to wherever the prince was and their whole back and forth sometimes dragged out too much too. I really liked the moment when they found out who each other was and the snow avalanche and things like that where they came together and were actually bantering while trying to capture the prince but everything in between dragged on a little too much sometimes and that made the pacing really odd.
In all, I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who likes rivals to lovers stories but I would warn them about the pacing and world building for sure. 

Well this was a little disappointing.
I definitely think the first book could have been a standalone if

they hadn't killed her mom.

It had all of the character development and growth and I don't think this book really wrapped anything up that hadn't already been finished in the first one. This book just felt unnecessary.
I liked the idea of the retelling of a Greek hero story that was clearly the plot of this book, but it didn't really work for me. I felt like Bri was much more passive in this book than she had been in the first one. She was kind of just going along with everyone else and didn't really do anything to move the story forward or even help with the adventure aspect. Even when she got caught by the others, she didn't do anything but wait to be rescued.  It felt odd for her character to just let the people around her make the decisions. She didn't even do anything special to bring the heart together like everything was implying it would need. I don't know why Circe felt like Bri needed to be there at all or why Hecate singled Bri out for this when

Circe did most of the work and Persephone was the one to give up her life.

I did enjoy the moments we got with Bri and Marie. They were cute together and I wish there had been more to develop their relationship farther.
Overall, I felt like this book did nothing to further Bri's growth or even tie up any loose ends because everything is was mostly done with the first one. I think this duology could easily be just a standalone with the first book. 

This was okay. I actually had a lot of fun with the main character. I support women's rights, but most importantly, I support women's wrongs.
Alessandra was strong, ambitious, smart, and lethal. She knew what she wanted and she wasn't letting anyone get in the way of it. I found that I liked her ambition and her desire for power even if she was not a very good person at all. I also liked watching her fall in love with the king. It gave her depth that she definitely needed in order to be more likable and less one-dimensional. Her feelings were always genuine which helped her be more gray than the initial introduction as well. If she likes someone, she will protect them and help them with their goals and ambitions as well. It was nice to see.
She was probably the best thing about this book because the rest of it was very.... underdeveloped.
First of all, the king had no personality. He wanted to hold onto his power and therefore held everyone at a distance and even though Alessandra was starting to fall in love with him, I didn't really see anything about him to fall in love with. I can't think of one personality trait to describe him. He's not particularly smart, he isn't humorous, he's not charismatic or humble or friendly or anything. The author tried to paint him as tyrant king but even that is told to us rather than shown on the page. His only motivations were to find who killed his parents and to hold onto his special power. I don't know. He was just boring.
And the world building in this book was nonexistent. I don't think they even name the kingdom that they're in? Why is this shadow king taking over all of these other lands? Just because he wants the power? What power can they give him? Also where does his magic come from? Why is his family the only one that has any kind of magic and why was that never a concern for anyone? Why did he had this magical ability but his brother didn't? In magical worlds like this, it is highly unlikely for only one family to have magic, or if that's the case, there's usually some magic inherent in the land itself or something. It doesn't just come from nowhere. None of these questions or any like them can be answered in this book which is a basic necessity of the fantasy genre.
I did have fun with this book but I think it was only because of Alessandra and enjoying her character. There really wasn't much else here to like. And I listened to the short excerpt of the next book at the end and it switches to a story about her sister and I didn't enjoy her as a character as much, so I will not be picking up the second one. 

I really enjoyed the art style of this one. It was simple and concise even though the content was deep, emotional, and sometimes difficult to read. I applaud the author for writing about eir experiences of being nonbinary in a forced binary world. It couldn't have been easy to relive some of these things while writing and drawing them. 
I really appreciated the look into an experience much different from my own to see how much nonbinary people have to go through and try to see my own misgivings and ways I could try to help make things easier.
The main criticism I have is that this jumped around quite a bit and some of the things I didn't think were entirely necessary. I know memoirs are difficult and sometimes don't work chronologically but I do prefer them to be as chronological as possible and I think this one was better than some others I've read but it still felt a little choppy to me and unorganized. I also felt like some things were brought up but didn't really have anything to do with the overall story. Like the snakes thing was brought up but then never mentioned again. I don't know if it was included just to give personality and show how "tomboy"-ish the author was or what. If that was the case, I feel like it could have been incorporated a little bit better rather than just randomly inserting it in the beginning with no connection to anything else.
Besides that, this was a really good graphic novel and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to be a better ally to the trans and nonbinary community. 

I was really excited for this book and it honestly ended up being a bit of a let down sadly.
I want to be clear, I still enjoyed the book. I liked the two main characters and I thought they had great chemistry. Some of their interactions were so hot and I loved that. But ultimately, I think this was a little overhyped.
With a vampire and a vampire hunter who hate each other from something in their past, I was expecting more banter and angst between them but I really didn't see any of that which was the most disappointing part about this honestly. I like my enemies to lovers to have really great banter and loads of angst but there was just none of that here. I'm glad it didn't affect the chemistry between the two of them, but I still felt like it was missing.
And then there's the plot of the book. I did not expect it to be a murder mystery kind of story. The whole time they were trying to figure out why vampires were turning human and dying. I thought it was interesting, especially the turning human part since the book portrayed most vampires as humans who were infected and didn't want to be what they are. I sympathized with them in wanting to get back to the life they had before. But ultimately, I think the pacing was off. It really dragged in some parts where I was really bored with it and I zoned out while listening to the audio but when I refocused I realized that I hadn't really missed much. And this happened quite often. I don't know what about it was making me lose focus on the book, I just know that I found it boring all together and that was the second biggest disappointment here.
I'm so sad because sapphic vampire and vampire hunter had so much potential but this really fell flat for me. I'm currently debating if I'll read the next one or not. 

Another fantastic horror book from T. Kingfisher. This one is the second book in the Sworn Soldier series and though it wasn't quite as good as the first one, I still think it deserves high praise.
I don't know if she plans to do more books in this series or not, but I do really love these characters. They're all quirky in their own way and they're so fun and memorable and I would love to see what other creepy, horrible, terrifying adventures they could get up to together. I love that they stick together and just believe each other no matter what crazy thing the other is saying. It takes a lot of trust for one person to just believe their friend when they're telling them about a ghost suffocating them in their sleep honestly. It's kind of funny to think about it.
This one was more supernatural whereas the first one was more mystical and because of that, this one was more creepy than gory and had much less body horror. Either way, the authors descriptions were so good and though they creeped me out, I still loved them.
Definitely a great series to recommend to anyone who likes horror or thriller. 

This one was pretty cute. I loved the premise of this book. Who wouldn't want to fall into their favorite book series and then end up falling in love with someone else who did the same thing?? It's literally every book lover's dream and that made the idea of this book so interesting.
I thought the main romance was so cute. Anderson was such a grumpy guy who seemed to turn everyone away from getting to know him until Eileen came in. She seems so happy and sunny but I liked that she was basically putting that on as a mask for how frozen inside she really was. She put everything on pause in her life after her breakup but outwardly you wouldn't know it. I would have liked to see her open up more to Anders as the book went on. I felt like they had some really cute moments together but I never really felt like they were actually getting to know one another. I can't even remember if she ever told him about her ex fiancé Liam. But I still enjoyed their cute scenes together like the waterfall and the spaghetti.

And I liked that he took the time to "get his life in order" before rushing to be with her right away at the end. It was definitely necessary for them both to get their lives to where they really wanted to be before they jumped into a life together and I'm glad that Poston recognized that and kept it in the story.

That being said, quite a bit of this book didn't work as well as I wanted it to. First of all, the side characters and plots were boring. I was not invested in these characters from a fictional book inside this book because I hadn't read the same stories as Elsie has. So I didn't care about them like she did and so whenever she was trying to help them, I just wanted her to go back to Anders and develop their relationship more, especially since I still feel at the end that it was lacking a little bit. I feel like most of the side characters were interchangeable and I couldn't keep up with who was who throughout most of the book. Their plots were kind of interesting with the ghost toilet and the missing possum but I just ultimately didn't care enough about them and so they were boring.
Second, if I were Elsie and had just stumbled into my favorite book series, I would have SO MANY questions and the fact that Elsie knew that Anders was aware the whole thing was a book but no one else was, would add even more questions that I would then ask him. But she didn't??? It was very noticeable that she didn't ask him a single thing about how that world got to be there, how he stumbled into it, nothing. Like, even if he didn't know the answers, these would still be the first questions out of my mouth once I realized what was happening and the lack of these logistical questions bothered me throughout the entire book. 
I'm guessing they were omitted in order to set up the overall miscommunication troupe of Elsie

assuming Anders is part of the story rather than a real person.

But I still hated that these questions weren't asked at all.
Overall, I think it's a fascinating premise for a book, but it might not have been executed as well as I would have hoped for.